Can you think of one movie with a totally (and I mean totally) despicable, worthless, rotten to the bone and unredeemable villain? Annie Wilkes? Burke from "Aliens"? You're not there yet. Imagine a bad guy who's so twisted, psychopathic, unpredictable, violent, hateful, ugly that there's not a single spot of likability or colorfulness left; in fact, someone who's not even so-evil or so-bad he's good. There is a movie with such a bad guy, his name is Richie Madano, he's played by the so-underrated William Forsythe, the film is "Out for Justice", it's directed by John Flynn, it stars Steven Seagal (as Gino, the cop) and it's extremely brutal.
To call Richie a thug or a bully would be like calling Amon Goeth a delinquent. Physically, the man's got the look of a dandy who's been puffed up to resemble a walrus, inside, he's a product of the underworld of the underground with a bunch of goons sticking around him like hyenas behind Scar, maybe because leaving him would be like signing your own death warrant. Indeed, he's so high on cocaine or any drugs that he lost every common sense even by criminal standards and keeping a low profile isn't exactly his strongest suit as shown by his character-establishing moment, two actually.
First, he executes in cold blood a cop in broad daylight in front of his wife and kids, spits on his corpse and after that that kills an innocent woman who had the misfortune to be blocked by his car, wrong place at the wrong moment. And for some reason, the second murder shocked me even more: as gruesome as the former was, it had a "reason" if you can call it so, something of a rage that grew inside Richie and lead him to the trigger, but when that woman started beeping and he gave her that look from his car, I knew I had to deal with another type of villain, the unpredictable type, the kind of guy who makes you look at your shoes when you cross his eyes in a train. He doesn't need a reason to kill, only a circumstance, he shoots first and spits on the consequences.
And the merit of such a villain is to free the film from any kind of twist that could get in the way between him and the hero. There's no plot actually, only two characters, the film is basically Richie making an enemy out of Gino, Gino looking for Richie and Gino killing Richie, but what is essential to appreciate the film is the way the two men are totally opposite and yet connected one to another, displaying the same hardened determination to pursue a goal that goes beyond rationality. In fact, Richie's a dead man already and he knows it, only he wishes to die in a blaze of glory, venting out all his anger toward his enemies and those who have the misfortune to have one word too many or to cross his path, he's got nothing to lose and that makes him even more dangerous.
Gino who grew up in the same neighborhood, followed a totally different path and decided to be a cop. Why? Because he knows a man like him would do a great disservice to the community if he didn't use his strength or his skills to protect the little creatures. There's a little subplot with a puppy he found on the street and we see Gino taking care of him. Richie might have flattened him first and reversed the car with a manic laugh. Richie and Gino. These two men represent a collision of morality against savagery: strength against brutality, chaos and order. When Rickie kills a man, it's ugly and detestable, when Gino neutralizes one, it's neat, clean and deserved. Both are equally lethal and both belong to a world where violence has its codes.
Interestingly, if Richie rejects the rules of the mob (he kills a cop in front and his kids) and might even be a threat for his parents and sister (Gina Gershon), Gino also despises the mob, tells what he thinks to the local boss, comforts Richie's parents and his methods aren't all procedural. Gino has his rules too, and in a way Richie is the perfect archenemy. And yet the climactic fight consists on a gruesome one-sided massacre in the most ordinary and anticlimactic place: a kitchen. And there's something grotesque in the way Richie tries to turn common culinary objects into weapons, thinking he stands a chance against Gino who respond to every attack with enough blows to beat Richie's face into pulp. The climax is the right culmination of the cat-and-mouse chase that prevailed: it takes place in a private place, making the beating not just personal but almost intimate. When Gino tells Richie he should have kept his gun, Richie says he likes pain which sounds like an odd invitation when taken out of context.
It's the collision between two guys who belong to the same world but don't share the same philosophy, the beast and the superhuman, the savage and the noble. Through a simple action flick formula mostly set at night, "Out for Justice" illustrates the striking contrast between these two universes, showing people who are totally helpless in that rotten world and in need of invincible heroes like Steven Seagal. Seagal is never as good as when the villains are bad, they were fun in "Under Siege" but extremely disturbing in "Out for Justice" maybe because it shows one thing: heroes today must have the skills of their enemies to overpower them and yet remain deeply good inside. That's Gino, a man who can plug a corkscrew on a face and save a little puppy.
"Out for Justice" is a solid B-movie but with philosophical undertones that reminded me of Cronenberg's "History of Violence".
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