Street Corner Justice (1996)

Unlike most B movies that deal with urban vigilante justice themes, "Street Corner Justice" illustrates it in a more realistic manner, showing that vigilante practices can create a whole bunch of problems. That was interesting, certainly more interesting than the rest of the movie. The movie does indeed have a once in a lifetime B movie cast (Marc Singer, Bryan Cranston, Steve Railsback, Soon Teck Oh, "Tiny" Lister Jr., and Clint Howard), but none of these actors come across very well. They either underact or overact, and it doesn't help that some of their dialogue is so poorly recorded that it's hard to make out at times. Singer comes off the worst, in part because his role is so bland and reluctant to get involved, not deciding to help the residents of his neighborhood until more than half the movie has passed. In fact, the story itself is also slow-moving, and severely lacks scenes that could be safely labelled "action sequences". It doesn't help that the movie's low budget is often very evident (check the pathetic sets passing for hospitals or police stations interiors), as well as the fact that there are a significant number of ineptly edited sequences that suggest the production couldn't afford to film every bit of the script. Why someone thought this was worthy to re-release on DVD, I cannot say.

The Beastmaster himself, Marc Singer (presumably having now lost his telepathic affinity with animals and subsequently washed up and looking like a right scruffy old sod here!) headlines in this action(less) entry as maverick cop (yep, cliché territory, full steam ahead!) Mike Justice, a man who doesn't play by the rules.....etc. etc........yawn. To be fair, Singer puts in a decent performance as always and is additionally backed up by a good assembled cast which includes the consistently excellent Steve Railsbeck and the perpetually menacing looking Tommy Lister but sadly, none of them are given anything of remote interest to do here in what amounts to be an entirely bland and predictable effort. If the truth be told, if not for the high level of violence, swearing and some brief nudity, I would have sworn this was a mundane made for TV movie. Oh well........you have been warned.

Yeah this is a bad film. Actually anything Marc Singer has done since "V: The Final Battle" has been of the lowest possible quality. Which is too bad because Marc Singer could have become a great character actor. Anyway, this is yet another film about gang violence that knows nothing of it's subject. The only high point is that it was all shot in Eagle Rock, CA (also where Tom Cruise's character from "Days Of Thunder" was from). So if you live in Eagle Rock or have ever spent any time there this film may be very fun to watch and see how the filmmakers have ghetto-ized the town. Other than that there is no good reason to see this movie.

While Steve Railsback and Marc Singer turn in decent performances, the rest of the case, especially Soon-Tek Oh and Kim Lankford, don't come up to even high school Christmas program standards. While Lankford possesses a beautiful smile and has turned out to be a very lovely mature woman, she isn't convincing in the role of Singer's love interest, and Oh, who has done good work in the past, overacts to the point of burlesque. The script is nothing to write home about, and the production values are bargain-basement. The only positive I can come up with is that Singer is at least paired with a woman that approaches his own age. Rent STREET CORNER JUSTICE only if you want to look at Kim Lankford's pretty face.