Customer Reviews

Kinjite - Forbidden Subjects

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After the demolishing success of Death Wish, Charles Bronson in his accustomed style of elegant roughness, makes a convincing role as a detective who has to face with a gang who exploits teen girls to prostitution. The script is credible and shows us the dark side of the moon. Bitter and dark humor are intermingled with the expected doses of violence in these usual cases, but the result is satisfactory.

If you realize the last sequence you will understand you agree with Bronson in that sardonic smile. eye for eye.

I remember when Kinjite first came out. It received harsh reviews from the Beavis and Butthead of snob reviewers(no names needed..you know who they are). When I finally saw it I liked it. Of course it's not perfect but what movie under Golan and Globus is? Plus they trashed the movie because of the subject matter but the subject matter happens in real life.

Plot: LT Crowe(Charles Bronson) goes out of his way to bust a child prostitution ring. He ends up furious after his daughter is molested by an Asian man. He later has to help an Asian man find his own daughter after she was kidnapped. Here is a twist: the same man Crowe has to help molested Crowe's daughter.

The storyline is what keeps the movie interesting. The action scenes are kept to a minimum and Charles Bronson had some pretty funny lines. The main reason why I like Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects is that you can tell that there was an effort to make it work. It wasn't your typical Charles Bronson fare and that made it appealing. My biggest gripe with the film is that the same guy that molested Crowe's daughter is never dealt with. That just doesn't sit too well with me but other than that it was a good movie.

Its easy to slam this movie based on a subject matter that repulses most people but that isnt being fair. Child prostitution is a reality so bashing a movie for showing a reality is pretty damn stupid. But what can you expect from the same critics that gave Speed 2: Booze Control two thumbs up? If you love the late Charles Bronson's movies than you cant go wrong with Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects. Its better than the weak link of the Death Wish series.

While being a film of questionable subject matter, this is not a badly made film. Cinematography, editing, score and performances were a bit above average for Bronsons later flicks. I do find it strange that Bronson would take on such a distatseful premise for a plot. Not a whole lot of action in ths one, more of a 'cop investigates crime' plot than the 'blow away punks' that we're used to.

This film is mostly for Bronson addicts and completeists. Before watching this one, just make sure that you've seen The Stone Killer, Hard Times, all the Death Wish, Breakout, From Noon till Three, Violent City, The Mechanic and Mr. Majestyk first.

Remember, Bronson was never bad, just in bad films...

This is an extremely ugly film. Extremely ugly. I'm surprised that Bronson himself wasn't a little leery about doing this. This film shows us an all too real, filthy business that goes on right under our noses, in many cities throughout the world: Child prostitution. My only gripe with this film is that the problem is there, but the film doesn't seem to have any message or solution, but merely uses child prostitution as new subject matter for a Bronson action flick. This makes the film seem much, much sleazier because the subject matter is treated so cheaply. I mean, I cannot believe the stuff that happens to the young Japanese girl in the film! But all in all I like to view this film in the mindset that I view all Bronson films, and that makes it much more enjoyable. I give this four stars alone for the scene where Bronson makes a pimp swallow his wristwatch, then casually sets fire to his car. I'm not sure if I've ever laughed harder. He does have some great lines too. There's a great scene where he storms in on a porno film being shot and just beats the snot out of everyone. Bronson's about 70 years old here! It's great! Do I recommend? Yes, just know what you're going to see in this. The only solution this movie has to this horrible problem is that you can kill a pimp with a giant claw hanging from a crane.

If you want a good laugh or two, then this is the movie for you. The acting is chessy, the violence is plentiful and best of all the plot is nonexistent, so you can sit back relax have a few beers and relive the glory of the 80's.

In this movie about the Charles 'Death Wish'
Bronson style cop fighting teen prostitution,
there is ascene at the Los Angeles Cobras v
Chicago Brusiers game (1988) in the L.A.
Sports Arena. Great early clip of Arenaball
in a Popular Culture film. Truely Bronson
and Co. had an eye to the future. Pick Up On
It Arenafans!

Every few months I find myself lamenting the passing of Charles Bronson. He died in 2003, and it is only in the last year or so that many of his memorable films have started to arrive on DVD. I suspect most viewers will consider that a bad thing, especially concerning his "Death Wish" films and the other low budget boilerplate actioners he made under the Cannon banner in the 1980s. Not me; I love watching the stone faced Bronson mow down waves of street scum in a vain attempt to rescue America from the forces of decadence within. Arguably the apogee of this type of Bronson film is "Death Wish 3," an almost cartoonish romp that finds Chuck running through the streets of a New York City slum spraying rounds from a belt fed machine gun. You'd be hard pressed to find a Clint Eastwood film that tops any of the later "Death Wish" entries. They are all out on DVD, along with an even sleazier albeit slightly less violent film called "Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects." Arriving on the scene as the 1980s closed, "Kinjite" was the last film Bronson made with Cannon. It's also the final film lensed by Hollywood veteran J. Lee Thompson. Talk about the end of an era!

Bronson plays architect turned vigilante Paul Kersey...er, I mean a Los Angeles cop named Crowe who simply cannot stomach his job as a vice cop anymore. It's tough to blame him after witnessing the opening scene, a scene that involves a young teenage girl named DeeDee (Nicole Eggert) and a much older man at a swank hotel. Crowe and his partner Eddie Rios (Perry Lopez) burst into the room just in time to prevent a sordid activity from taking place. DeeDee's companion unwisely mouths off to Crowe and receives a beating as a result. Then Bronson does something so repulsive to this guy that the movie can't even show it. Afterwards, Crowe goes home and whines to his wife about the horrors of the job. He even talks about quitting. I should think so, Lt. Crowe! What you did in the hotel room at the very least spotlights the need for an early retirement if not a few years in prison. Anyway, Bronson's character has witnessed so many depravities on the job that he assumes an overprotective stance regarding his attractive young daughter Rita (Amy Hathaway). He doesn't like her messing around with boyfriends, wearing suggestive attire, or even posing for pictures in her bathing suit after a swim meet. Crowe's wife Kathleen (Peggy Lipton) thinks he's overreacting. But she hasn't seen the things her husband has seen.

The man responsible for most of Crowe's horrific visions is Duke (Juan Fernandez), a guy who runs the harridan ring that ensnared DeeDee and plenty others like her. Bronson's character knows who Duke is, but he can't secure enough evidence to keep him behind bars. Duke's luck runs out, however, thanks to a subplot involving a Japanese businessman named Hiroshi Hada (James Pax) moving to Los Angeles. Hada has his own issues with young girls, but when Duke abducts his young daughter and turns her out on the street the businessman comes into contact with Crowe. Doesn't sound like a big deal, right? Well, it turns out that Hada is none other than the stranger who accosted Rita Crowe on a bus one night. Obviously, Lt. Crowe has no idea that the man he is helping is the same bloke responsible for terrorizing his daughter. What a complex web "Kinjite" weaves for us! While we try to sort out the numerous interweaving subplots, the movie treats us to lots of over the top antics that beg for Bronson to pull out a machine gun and start blasting. He gets around to that eventually, thank goodness, in a finale with lots of explosions and cartwheeling bodies. We can never get enough cartwheeling bodies. In fact, every movie could benefit from more of them.

"Kinjite" is a personal favorite for many reasons. I first saw the film on cable back in the early 1990s and never forgot the part where Bronson makes Duke swallow a Rolex watch. That scene alone makes this movie a winner, but there's a lot more going for Bronson's final Cannon film. For instance, I completely failed to remember how hilarious Perry Lopez is as Crowe's sidekick. His humor has little to do with throwing out funny lines or mugging for the camera and everything to do with his total lack of presence. The guy stands around like a lead weight, usually looking at something off camera while remaining utterly silent. It almost seems like he thinks he's in another film! Maybe he can't believe his agent got him a job in a movie this sleazy. Even funnier is Bronson, whose facial expressions and body language achieve heights of ridiculousness. Be sure and watch for the scene at the swim meet where Bronson tries to express exasperation. I've seen better acting at a dinner theater. An important message about Crowe's prejudice towards Asians goes almost nowhere in a film that repeatedly emphasizes child abuse, murder, extralegal killings, and torture. In fact, the movie never even resolves the most significant subplot.

Why waste time watching such a vile piece of trash? Because "Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects" is a film in the grand tradition of Bronson's other depraved revenge flicks, and I for one lament the passing of this remarkable tradition. The only bonus feature on the disc is a trailer, sad to say. Surprisingly, MGM released "Kinjite" on disc in anamorphic widescreen, something they often failed to do with several of the "Death Wish" films. Not as memorable as the "Death Wish" films but just as seedy, "Kinjite" is a must for sleazy cinema lovers and Bronson completists alike.

Offering a killer combo of terrible writing, terrible acting and terrible direction, it's a tossup whether Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects is offensively bad or just hilariously bad. It's almost as if someone ran a competition to make the sleaziest, seediest Cannon film. As if a glance at a cast list including characters like 'Lesbian Pedophile,' 'Perverted Gentleman,' 'Porno Actress' weren't enough, it's your only chance to see Charles Bronson's cop throw a lowlife on a bed and grab a sex toy - but don't worry, it's okay, as the offscreen screams make clear he's only torturing him for information. After all, even if he is a bit overprotective of his nice Catholic daughter, he's a nice Catholic cop who regularly brings local Catholic priest William O'Connell a packed lunch and who believes in poetic justice - or at least ensuring that the bad guys end up in the slammer with the horniest inmates maximum security can provide to give them a taste of their own medicine. But then that's what you get for telling him "Look, I think you're a little bit unstable." Still, when later offered a bribe, he may snarl "I'd like to shove this up your a**, but I don't want to get my hands dirty," he's clearly learned where to draw the line: instead, he just makes him eat a $25,000 watch and sets fire to his Cadillac. The anal obsession even follows through to the film's title: despite the poster featuring a naked Japanese girl on a porn film set, the film's only direct example of Kinjite/forbidden subjects, as Alex Hyde White's English teacher explains to a group of Japanese businessmen, is, er talking about your bowel movements in polite society.

Bronson isn't just too old for this, as the opening fight makes only too clear, he's too old for love interest Peggy Lipton, and she looks old enough to have grown-up kids. A better actor than he ever got the credit for when given the right material, here's he's given less a properly thought out character than a series of outrageous reactionary quirks. When he's not widening the circles of suspects he's accidentally dropping them to their death off the sides of buildings. He's definitely not a P.C. copper, with a special loathing for the Japanese - as if it wasn't bad enough that they're buying up American businesses, what's worse, they double-park on a public thoroughfare! No racial minority goes unassaulted, be they black pimp or Pakistani hotel clerk, no cop cliché unrecycled, be it a boss who bangs his fist on the table or a dead meat partner (Perry Lopez and his spectacularly bad hair dye that's so prominent it deserves screen billing all its own). The twin plot strands - Bronson's L.A. cop trying to take down Juan Hernandez's pimp who deals in underage girls and James Pax's porn-obsessed Japanese businessman - take forever to intertwine, and then in the most unlikely of ways: after copping a feel of Bronson's daughter on a bus ("Some Oriental guy touched my holy of holies!"), in the film's idea of poetic justice Pax finds his own daughter kidnapped by Hernandez. You half expect the writer to pop his head round the corner of the screen and say, "How d'ya like them apples?"

Somewhere underneath all the laziness is the germ of a good idea even if it is too muddily developed to ever be clear quite what that idea really is, but the execution is pure Rising Sun: the Archie Bunker Version, shot like out-takes from an R-rated 80s music video with an outrageous and rather lazy dockside shoot-'em-up-and-blow'em-up finale that sees a small army of machine-gunning sidekicks suddenly appear to up the gratuitous body count. The last of Bronson's mostly bad to indifferent collaborations with J. Lee Thompson - and sadly Thompson's last film as director - it's a poor signoff for two undervalued players who increasingly never seemed to be that discerning about what pictures they said yes to.

An indifferent transfer with only a brief trailer as an extra.

My friend loved this movie and it arrived earlier than expected. Great purchase! Not much else to say but my friends were very satisfied and happy with it

I'm sure that the subject disturbs a lot of men whom, well, would rather see it legalized to have relations with kids. But as a victim of child molestation, this movie always gave me a wonderful feeling of peace... justice... the long overdue retribution criminals deserve.

I give it 100 times 100 stars. Society needs more positive messages like the one Charles Bronson sent out to the criminals.