For some reason, last night I watched the movie
Getting Even from 1977. It stars an extremely young Chris Mulkey who has been in a lot of great movies but this might be the only one I have seen where he played the lead. It was a grim and nasty affair that waded hip-deep through a pit of misogyny from the first scene and through most of the rest of its runtime. One reviewer on IMDB commented specifically on the amount of rape that is in the movie, and I could not agree more. To the filmmakers credit, the rape and mistreatment is never presented as anything other than abhorrent. Clearly inspired by
Death Wish which had come out 3 years prior, the story is of an older brother, played by Mulkey, who wants to "get even" with a group of four unrepentant scumbags who raped and killed his sister. He is forced into his vigilante role by a justice system that turns the confessed killers out onto the street due to a procedural error. The biggest problem for me was that when the time for revenge comes, it does so at a level that is far below what is deserved. Justice is served, but the same way that you might serve a lukewarm hot pocket, with embarrassment and a vague sense of culinary impotence.
-Marty
For some reason, last night I watched the movie Getting Even from 1977. It stars an extremely young Chris Mulkey who has been in a lot of great movies but this might be the only one I have seen where he played the lead. It was a grim and nasty affair that waded hip-deep through a pit of misogyny from the first scene and through most of the rest of its runtime. One reviewer on IMDB commented specifically on the amount of rape that is in the movie, and I could not agree more. To the filmmakers credit, the rape and mistreatment is never presented as anything other than abhorrent. Clearly inspired by Death Wish which had come out 3 years prior, the story is of an older brother, played by Mulkey, who wants to "get even" with a group of four unrepentant scumbags who raped and killed his sister. He is forced into his vigilante role by a justice system that turns the confessed killers out onto the street due to a procedural error. The biggest problem for me was that when the time for revenge comes, it does so at a level that is far below what is deserved. Justice is served, but the same way that you might serve a lukewarm hot pocket, with embarrassment and a vague sense of culinary impotence.
-Marty
