So you’ve been rejected by the LAPD academy for psychiatric concerns. Do you:
A) seek a psychiatrist
B) seek career counseling
C) pick innocent people out of the phone book and kill them
D) ask, “Father, what’s a phone book?”
In William Lustig’s Relentless, Buck Taylor (Breakfast Club member Judd Nelson) chooses “C” and lets his trigger finger do the walking. Buck’s spree as a serial killer coincides with Sam Dietz’s first day on the job as a homicide detective, mentored/bullied by grizzled veteran Malloy (Robert Loggia, Jagged Edge). As Dietz and Malloy gather clues, Buck keeps on buckin’ societal norms. The standout sequence finds him crashing through his latest target’s condo skylight, then following her to an ultimately ineffective hiding place: inside the basement’s washing machine.
Between this and Hit List, Lustig had one hell of a 1989! Ditto for screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson between this, even if he took a pseudonym, and Field of Dreams, for which he earned an Oscar nod. Highlighted by a ironic use of Norman Rockwell’s The Runaway painting in its closing, Relentless is a reliable programmer — the kind of intentional B movie that enjoyed an A-level theatrical release coast to coast, the kind of highly competent genre outing that Larry Cohen knocked out with regularity.
Upon the film’s release, Nelson playing against his Brat Pack type was neither welcomed nor appreciated, but he admirably commits to the vanity-free role of Utter Nutjob … and perhaps overcommits, rendering Buck too childlike in moments. His performance overall isn’t dissimilar from what Robert Downey Jr. delivered in that era — haircut included!
As Dietz, the minimally appealing Leo Rossi (Lustig’s Maniac Cop II) doesn’t exactly engender viewer goodwill with his overuse of “jerk-off” as a noun in daily vocab and by threatening his child (Brendan Ryan, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey) with “a knuckle sandwich.”
Now, I’m not saying you will root against Dietz in his pursuit of justice, but if not for his kind and supportive wife (Meg Foster, The Lords of Salem), you would root against Dietz in his pursuit of justice. So naturally, his character is the star of the entire franchise, from Dead On: Relentless II to Relentless IV: Ashes to Ashes. I’ll still watch them, though, having liked original-recipe Relentless this much. —Rod Lott