“You ever notice how bad people drive when you’re in a hurry?”

Drake’s rating: Raging Rick is no replacement for Mad Max

Drake’s review: Director Abel Ferrara is most often connected to gritty neo-noir films like Ms. 45 and The Bad Lieutenant. So it was something of a surprise to see his name pop up as the director of an ABC Movie of the Week that’s neither gritty nor a neo-noir. Granted, The Gladiator was originally meant for the theaters, but there’s little in the final product to indicate that. In fact, aside from a few nice car stunts, this one’s just plain mediocre.

Which it shouldn’t be, given the talent involved. Television regular Ken Wahl makes for a convincing hero, veteran actor Robert Culp is always good in the cop role, and any flick that can convince Nancy Allen to come along for the ride is OK by me. And if the story is one we’ve all seen before, that’s okay, too. There’s something to be said for familiarity in your standardized TV action movie.

Unfortunately, The Gladiator falters because it just doesn’t know how to really goose up the formulaic plot with eye-popping action. It does try, as a menacing black ‘69 Dodge Charger prowls the streets, gunning its engine and forcing unwary drivers off the road. And sometimes off a cliff. But the Charger is generally aided by people losing all of their ability to control an automobile in anything but ideal conditions, or in the case of Jeff Benton (future Good Burger producer/director Brian Robbins), a teen-aged neophyte behind the wheel.

Poor Jeff’s untimely demise spurs on his older brother, Rick (a fittingly broody Wahl), to beef up his Chevy pickup truck in order to go out and wage his own personal war on bad drivers. Rick attaches steel plates, hydraulic rams and, in a fit of either twisted genius or sheer madness, an actual harpoon launcher in the truck’s bed, and then roars out onto the city streets in search of those he deems dangerous.

And, granted, the pair of Mustangs he catches racing around on his first night could well be considered unsafe, especially if there were other cars on these suspiciously empty roads, but Rick’s own attempts to force them to stop could be considered to be more than slightly hazardous as well. Like, a harpoon through the rear window is just a bit of overkill, y’know?

The fact that Rick dutifully contacts the cops on his police band radio to let them know about these events is amusing as well, since they’ll likely show up and then do… what? They don’t have any evidence of the vehicular transgressions and Rick himself is operating under the alias of “the Gladiator” over the radio, so it’s not like he’s sticking around to act as a witness. So the police will likely roll up, hear about the unhinged maniac with a harpoon launcher on his truck, and about five minutes later an all-points bulletin is going to go out with every cop in the city looking for this “Gladiator” before he impales someone with his homemade arsenal.

And meanwhile, the Charger is still out there wreaking its own brand of havoc.

Nancy Allen makes a welcome appearance as a radio talk show host who knows Rick from his job as a mechanic, and Robert Culp is the overworked cop seemingly investigating every crime in the city, but their roles are unfortunately fairly superfluous. Stan Shaw (The Monster Squad) fares a bit better as Rick’s supportive friend, but even he gets sidelined by the third act in favor of some second-rate vehicular mayhem.

I was hoping for a little more from The Gladiator, and in the hands of someone like Hal Needham it likely would have been quite the spectacle. But Ferrara’s strengths as a director worked against this flick’s natural inclinations, resulting in an action movie that plays out like a drama. There are some fun stunts here, but the end result is still a middling actioner that never really gets in gear.

Intermission!

• Toonces! Noooo!!!
• You all got that reference, right?
• Rick Dees, famous for the minor 1970’s hit “Disco Duck,” plays Rick’s boss.
• He keeps trying to pick up Nancy Allen, but she’s all, “Gee, I have a casting call for RoboCop. I’ve gotta go…”
• “You’re gonna find trouble. Right here.” In River City?
• Car modding montage!
• You don’t need to drive the Mustang Cobra II off of the road. You just have to wait for its timing gear to explode. That shouldn’t take long.
• I don’t think the Charger’s extendable spinning blades are stock…