misbegotten Review of Street Hunter

Street Hunter (1990)

A great showcase for Steve James, with excellent support from Reb Brown.

[6/10 · 20 September 2020]

STREET HUNTER (1990) is noteworthy for having a rare leading role for Steve James, an actor who had regular work throughout the Eighties, but was mostly stuck playing the sidekick in films such as the AMERICAN NINJA series and a handful of Chuck Norris movies. In STREET HUNTER, James proved to have all the necessary requirements to be a major action movie star (even if only in straight-to-video fare): he convincingly looks and acts like someone you wouldn't want to mess with, has the martial arts moves (though his character in this film mostly relies on firearms), and possesses on-screen presence, charm and charisma to burn. James plays an ex-New York cop turned modern-day bounty hunter with a great action hero name: Logan Blade. He's maintained his friendships with his former police colleagues and has built up a wide network of street-level contacts - various snitches and lowlifes who are prepared to talk to him, but not to the NYPD. My only compliant is that Blade is portrayed as being somewhat too smooth and too good to be true. But James (who also co-wrote the script) manages to make him more real, fully rounded and likeable than the various characters being played by the likes of Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Norris, etc, at the time. He also lets Blade be shown as vulnerable, especially in regards to his relationship with his longtime girlfriend, a nightclub singer who complains (understandably) that during their five years together, Blade has been living in a van, prowling the streets looking for highly dangerous scumbags, and she doesn't think this is the basis for a longterm future. STREET HUNTER also boasts an excellent villain, played by another cult B movie favourite, Reb Brown. He's an ex-military hardcase named Walsh, who served in Special Forces in 'Nam, was given a dishonourable discharge, and has spent the years since as a mercenary, working for warlords and death squads in various Third World hellholes. He's currently employed by a Latino street gang called the Diablos, who have formed an alliance with a Columbian drug cartel and are challenging the Mafia for control of New York's drugs trade, with Walsh as their game-changing secret weapon. Brown gives a restrained and highly effective performance, portraying Walsh as clearly unhinged, but also unnervingly calm, quiet, softly spoken and always in total control of his emotions. He's also obsessed with military history, and there are great scenes where he lectures the Latino street punks under his command (who are totally bemused and have no idea what he's talking about) regarding 'honour' and 'glory', and keeps equating their grubby drugs war with the great military campaigns carried out by Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Also in the cast is a young John Leguizamo as Angel, the Diablos' leader - a cocky, motor-mouthed and utterly worthless piece of human vermin, who's so dumb he doesn't realise that Walsh is openly taking over control of the gang, right in front of him. Visually and tonally STREET HUNTER most reminded me of THE PUNISHER (1989) and the MANIAC COP trilogy (1988 - 1992), and while not as good as those movies (also set in New York), it's not embarrassed to stand in their company. Apparently James hoped that STREET HUNTER would spawn a franchise, but it was not to be. He died of cancer in 1993 at the too-young age of 41.