My review was written in July 1983 after a Times Square screening.
Filmed late last year (with an alternate title of "Fierce Encounter", "Deadly Force" is a nondescript imitation of "Dirty Harry" mad by the team responsible for "Vice Squad". Unappealing lead players and a ho-hum script make for a desultory action picture, due for a short life in hit-and-run saturation release.
Episodic format introduces devil-may-care gun-for-hire Stoney Cooper (Wings Hauser, the maniac from "Vice Squad"), juggling New York and Los Angeles assignments. In latter locale, his trackdown of a mass murderer is obstructed by his ex-associate on the police force, Otto Hoxley (Lincoln Kilpatrick), while Cooper fortuitously makes up with his estranged wife Eddie (Joyce Ingalls), at newshen who is also covering the murder case.
Fitting by default in the B-picture category, "Force" lacks the unusual plotting or colorful gallery of characters which once distinguished this form of filmmaking. Key plot twists, particularly the identity of the power behind the killer, are telegraphed so that the audience is at least two reels ahead of the slow-witted leads. Aimed at the action audience, picture features many minority players but casts them in stereotyped roles, except for Lincoln Kilpatrick as the de rigeur tough policeman, making a strong impression in an otherwise undistinguished front line.
As the oversize, toothy lead, Hauser likewise made an impression as the nut terrorizing Season Hubley in "Vice Squad", but the attempt to convert him into a recurring Eastwood-like (or rather a B-level Robert Ginty-like) hero fails. Manhandling lowlifes throughout the film's poorly-knitted episodes. Hauser plays his new role as if wer still essaying a violent maniac, eliciting no sympathy in the process. While in Don Siegel's "Dirty Harry" the hunt and confrontations with killer Andy Robinson were carefully dominant over the episodes of routine Eastwood business, here the mad killer plot has no impact or urgency and differs from the subplots and fille along the way only in terms of body count.
Supporting Hauser in a stock role originally announced for Cindy Pickett, Joyce Ingalls delivers bored, monotone readings. Laying in a noisy musical score fails to ide the unexciting, "let's wrap this one up" nature of Paul Aaron's direction, which loses all credibility in the final reel when Hauser battles the main villain in comic strip "unkillable" scenes. Tech credits are okay.
Filmed late last year (with an alternate title of "Fierce Encounter", "Deadly Force" is a nondescript imitation of "Dirty Harry" mad by the team responsible for "Vice Squad". Unappealing lead players and a ho-hum script make for a desultory action picture, due for a short life in hit-and-run saturation release.
Episodic format introduces devil-may-care gun-for-hire Stoney Cooper (Wings Hauser, the maniac from "Vice Squad"), juggling New York and Los Angeles assignments. In latter locale, his trackdown of a mass murderer is obstructed by his ex-associate on the police force, Otto Hoxley (Lincoln Kilpatrick), while Cooper fortuitously makes up with his estranged wife Eddie (Joyce Ingalls), at newshen who is also covering the murder case.
Fitting by default in the B-picture category, "Force" lacks the unusual plotting or colorful gallery of characters which once distinguished this form of filmmaking. Key plot twists, particularly the identity of the power behind the killer, are telegraphed so that the audience is at least two reels ahead of the slow-witted leads. Aimed at the action audience, picture features many minority players but casts them in stereotyped roles, except for Lincoln Kilpatrick as the de rigeur tough policeman, making a strong impression in an otherwise undistinguished front line.
As the oversize, toothy lead, Hauser likewise made an impression as the nut terrorizing Season Hubley in "Vice Squad", but the attempt to convert him into a recurring Eastwood-like (or rather a B-level Robert Ginty-like) hero fails. Manhandling lowlifes throughout the film's poorly-knitted episodes. Hauser plays his new role as if wer still essaying a violent maniac, eliciting no sympathy in the process. While in Don Siegel's "Dirty Harry" the hunt and confrontations with killer Andy Robinson were carefully dominant over the episodes of routine Eastwood business, here the mad killer plot has no impact or urgency and differs from the subplots and fille along the way only in terms of body count.
Supporting Hauser in a stock role originally announced for Cindy Pickett, Joyce Ingalls delivers bored, monotone readings. Laying in a noisy musical score fails to ide the unexciting, "let's wrap this one up" nature of Paul Aaron's direction, which loses all credibility in the final reel when Hauser battles the main villain in comic strip "unkillable" scenes. Tech credits are okay.