Price of Vengeance

(Alistair Brown, 1985)
Here Emmeritus attempts a narrative of the Hamilton mafia, as an upwardly mobile businessman is called back to his sleazy roots when his hockey-player-gone-wrong brother is murdered. As he pieces things together, he finds himself on a collision course with some Italian gangsters he's known since childhood. Bizarrely, the Don is actually one of the most sympathetic characters in the piece, certainly more so than the protagonist - the more appalling details emerge of his brother's conduct, the more single-minded he seems to become about avenging him. It's self-consciously gloomy, almost 'existential', never a good idea since the shot-on-video production values automatically negate all atmospheric tension. As usual, illogic is rampant - dude recovers awful fast from that beating, and the still-camera-in-the-fish-finder routine is not redeemed by its procedural detail. And lead actor Edmund James does not convey the moral complexities that the director seems to be tilting at. At least there's some nice use of Hamilton Harbour, a climactic shootout on the Skyway, and most impressively a sidekick who's a black hockey player.