It's a quite San Fernando neighborhood, all of a sudden victimized by the "Cocaine cowboys", a cartel like organization of ruthless murdering thugs who terrorize the neighborhood where World War II hero Charles Durning has lived for years. He has witnessed a horrifying assassination in his fellow veteran pal Bert Remsen's greasy spoon (a man trying to steal donuts) and now he utilizes his war memories to take down these vile humans who kill through powder and flying bullets.
One of the great character actors of the 1970's through the early 21st Century, Charles Durning was the epitome of the scene stealing grandfatherly like older white gentleman, so to be given a lead at this stage of his career must have been a shock. He doesn't sidestep anything here, and yet, the script he's giving is so unpleasant and difficult to watch at times that in spite of some of the truths that it takes right off the pages of the Los Angeles Times, you feel like you're only getting a part of the story.
Durning lives with his widowed daughter-in-law and beloved grandson, plays war games with him, and now finds him involved in war games that takes him right back to the combat he faced fighting the Japanese. The stereotypical Hispanic thugs he comes up against here are representative of only a small percentage of the Mexican population in Los Angeles, but that's pretty much all you see. All of these gang members have a purposely placed gold tooth and prominent tattoo, speak in a type of Spanglish lingo that makes them instant monsters with no redemption, and are photographed in multiple numbers that make you feel like you are around a dozen Willie Lopez types from "Ghost".
Durning gives a sincere performance, expressing no racism on his own and even having a good black female friend in public defender attorney Pam Grier who treats him like a father and sets out to be his protector. The characterizations are either 100% noble or the contrast of completely evil and animalistic, and that would be acceptable if the individual situations that crop up during the film don't become frequently eye rolling.
Durning, running through a barrage of enormous plastic containers, hides among them as if it was some giant maze, and the visual appeal of that scene makes it both frightening and fascinating. But for one extremely overweight older man to go through the things that he goes through and try to make the audience believe it after while becomes a bit too much. The beloved character actress Lu Leonard plays Durning's often maddeningly sweet and concerned neighbor, and while her presence is always welcome, the dialogue between her and Durning never seems real. She's a sweeter version of Gladys Kravitz, and instead of crying for "Abner" seems to be declaring, "Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood."
Another strange scene has Durning in danger suddenly running into the side door of a strange woman's car passenger seat, forcing the frantic woman to drive him until he can get out safely. When he shows up at a pool hall and confronts the man he recognizes as the killer, he establishes the fact that he has the courage to deal with all this but once again, it does not ring true and indicates that just because something is on the page doesn't make it true, basically repeating something that a Japanese soldier had once said to him in combat.
He then turns the house into a fortress, puts on combat make-up, and just waits. And of course he has his old arsenal of war weapons, another sign that ideas overtook reality in creating a story that could have been really tight but ends up becoming a combination of laughable situations that may have been taken from this and used in the "Home Alone" movies. It was at this point that I realized what I was watching was completely contrived, filled with stock villains who may get what's coming to them (including a crooked cop), but you can't help but find eventually laughable in spite of the fact that the situation is frightening and maddening. After a while, I wondered if Nancy Reagan perhaps had a hand in this film being made as part of her anti-drug campaign.
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