Best one-liner: "I'd like to shove this up your ass, but I don't want to dirty my hands!"
Hey–
What the–
Is that a–
Eat your heart out 50 SHADES OF GREY. This is 50 SHADES OF
BRONSON!!!
The ninth out of nine collaborations between Charles Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson, KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS is looked upon by the consensus as ending this colossal cinematic team's output (
DEATH WISH 4,
MESSENGER OF DEATH,
MURPHY'S LAW,
THE WHITE BUFFALO,
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO,
ST. IVES) with a whimper. I'm here to tell you that, happily,
that's not the case. (And as a side note, I'm kind of impressed that I've now reviewed 7 of the 9– all except CABO BLANCO and 10 TO MIDNIGHT.)
Listen: whaddya want? Just tell me what you want, and I'll see if we have it. Try me. Come on. You want–
CHEEZ FRIES IN DA FACE?
...You're next!
You want high-kickin' senior citizens?
You want Bronson complaining about "sucking hind tit?"
You want Bronson and Perry Lopez (Nicholson's friendly nemesis on the police force in CHINATOWN!) actin' like cop buddies and walking past a poster of Cannon's...
SALSA?
You want sleazy Sy Richardson with a deadened gaze and a big ol' jangly earring?
You want Bronson going to sporting events with his daughter and
being spied on by child-kidnapping kiddie-peddlin' pimps
as Bronson simultaneously becomes becomes the new 'crush of the moment' for his daughter's best friend?
He
is extreme. What can I say? Bronson makes quite an impression.
Anyway, we got all this and more forbidden subjects in KINJITE. But first let's pin this sucker down. Is it a Public Service Announcement? A skin flick? An after-school special? A gritty revenge movie? A sitcom pilot? A Cannon shoot-'em-up? Is it about race? Sex? Culture clash?
The answer to all of these questions of course is... "Yes."
KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS follows a few disparate plot lines which, for the most part, intersect in the most Cannon Film-ish ways possible. One is the tale of a visiting Japanese businessman played by BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA's "Lightning," James Pax.
He has two daughters who comment on psycho-sexual cultural divides between Japan and America.
And because he saw somebody get away with it on the subway back in Japan, he decides to try some L.A. bus groping on a gal singing the campfire classic, "P is for Party."
Of course, she turns out to be Bronson's daughter:
Now, before you cry 'cringey Japan-sploitation' (which you certainly ought to, at several points), I'd like to submit the idea that Pax delivers the most nuanced, ever-'present' performance in the film. He is fantastic, at points exuding genuine pathos and vulnerability. He's kind of too good for this movie, if you catch my meaning.
The next plotline is about those kiddie-peddlin' pimps I alluded to earlier. They're played by Juan "
BULLETPROOF" Fernández and Alex Cox-fixture and cult movie legend, Sy Richardson. Mostly, they drive around by the bus station, trying to pick up wet-behind-the-ears youngsters
for their booming prostitution ring. Leave it to Cannon films to tackle teenage hustling and the sex trade with the poetry of "rich asshole bandits." Also: note denim backpack.
Anyway, these two lowlifes eventually kidnap one of Pax's daughters in a scene which veers wildly between "genuinely disturbing" and "unintentionally hilarious after-school special" but eventually dips into "coke-and-asscrack-fueled softcore music video" territory. I'd also like to give special nod to Fernández as "Duke", whose ludicrously hateable pimp-napper reaches fey and comic heights, even for a Cannon film.
This leads us to our main plotline:
BRONSON. Bronson is a multi-dimensional character. On the one hand, he's racist toward Asian peoples
as far west as India (!):
but on the other hand, he's just a beleaguered dad
trying to raise a daughter (along with TWIN PEAKS' Peggy Lipton!) in an increasingly complicated world:
the poor guy even has to contend with studs hangin' out in his basement:
on the
other other hand, however, this Bronson hates something even more than bus-gropin' Asians and daughter-romancin' studs: PIMPS!
See, we've come full circle.
...BABIES!
It becomes about justice. It's the only thing Bronson cares about. I guess that's the only thing that he usually cares about, but here, in his last Cannon hurrah he's prepared to go to extreme
lengths to
puncture the truth and to
penetrate justice. As to what I'm alluding to, I can show you better than tell you:
For those of you too scared (or scarred!) to finish the clip and for those whose jaws need to be scraped from the floor with a spatula, that was indeed footage of Bronson seeking revenge against a teen prostitute's john while wielding a dildo and menacingly approaching said john's posterior.
But I think the icing on the cake is truly the fade from the john's screams to Bronson arriving home to the missus and casually announcing, "I don't think I'm going to be able to eat tonight."
And by no means is this the only time that 'justice' involves the jamming of sharp objects into unwilling orifices:
Yes, when Bronson catches up with Fernández's pimp for the first time, he takes the man's expensive wristwatch and, er, well, just see for yourself, in a clip that I have aptly named "Charles Bronson feeds a man a wristwatch faster than he can eat it."
And note that he doesn't "want to dirty my hands," implying that he learned a harsh n' grimy lesson the last time around.
Later, the pursuit of justice involves intimidating a doorman– BY FLINGING A STATUE THROUGH HIS GLASS BOOTH:
and by accidentally (!) flinging Sy Richardson to his death (well, he did kinda deserve it)
Regardless, this is all simply a prelude to the veritable orgy of retribution accomplished by Bronson at the hind-end of the film.
Having captured Fernández's pimp for a second time, he dumps him in a federal prison, whereupon he is paraded by gleeful prison guards and run along a gauntlet of the most one-dimensional, hilariously over-the-top prison rapists ever committed to celluloid in a Cannon film or otherwise (including Danny Trejo
who incidentally has "something big and long for you, sweet thing") as Bronson watches with wide-eyed, innocent, old man pleasure, wearing an expression that would certainly befit a grandpa at a pee-wee football game:
You can watch the whole gritty exchange
right here, and it basically plays like a parody of a swirly-eyed Boomer's cable news fascist prison fantasy.
As to those who consider this one of Bronson's worst? I don't know what to say to you. Perhaps you don't truly appreciate Bronson's art. Bronson's sincerity. Amid the cringe, you couldn't appreciate all the wonderful, spit-take inducing moments and subtle cheez-whiz majesties that awaited you. A truly astonishing, anally-fixated trashterpiece. Four-and-a-half-stars.
