Weird Wednesday: Night of the Juggler, An NYC Love Letter

This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series. For upcoming shows, click here.

Movies that take place in New York City are some of my favorite comfort films. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Escape from New York, After Hours, The Warriors. The thrill of being in a fast-paced city, the breeze of the subway flying by, the honks of angry drivers and rude pedestrians. New York City is a character all its own, bringing its own flair and emotion to every scene. In Night of the Juggler, New York is as much a character as Sean Boyd (James Brolin) and Gus Soltic (Cliff Gorman), and it feels alive. The city is pulsing with life, a misunderstood muse with a negative exterior. Night of the Juggler doesn’t shy away from New York’s reputation in the 1980s – full of crime, gentrification, and poverty. Despite the difficult exterior, the film strives to look lovingly at New York City, knowing under the rough edges there’s a place full of beauty and unique magic, a victim itself of fraught leadership. The action film is a gem of New York City based films and captures a flawed New York through a simple, effective story.

The premise of the film is straightforward, similar to a lot of my favorite action flicks. Sean, an ex-NYC cop, is confused for a real estate mogul by Gus, a bitter, crazed New Yorker who’s seen the negative side of the real estate mogul type in the place where he grew up. To get what he believes he’s owed, Gus kidnaps Sean’s daughter, Kathy (Abby Bluestone), sending threats and demanding a ransom to the actual real estate mogul whose daughter he believes he’s kidnapped. Sean tries to enlist the help of the NYPD, but he has a checkered past with them, trying to expose corrupt behavior and quitting because of his lack of progress. The film follows Sean’s journey through the city to find his daughter, chasing Gus through the streets, and dodging the cops who are out to get him.

This movie is known for its harsh and critical eye on New York City, but I found it a bit more endearing. Ultimately, I thought it was a love letter to the Big Apple. Her struggles are part of the setting, but the characters, Sean, Gus, and Kathy choose to love her anyways. In each of their own ways, the characters remain steadfast in their love for the place that’s done them all dirty in some way. Sean and his ex-wife, Kathy’s mother, separated due to his reluctance to move to the suburbs. Although he saw firsthand the issues NYC faced because of his time on the force, he didn’t want to abandon the city, even leaving his wife to stay amongst her towering buildings. Swoon. Sean’s willingness to expose the corruption within the police department also is a form of love – he knows the city and its people deserve better from their police force.

Gus is absolutely unhinged, but it doesn’t change the fact that his gripe is that his childhood neighborhood has been destroyed by real estate developers. If that’s not someone driven by passion and love for their city, I don’t know who is. He becomes visibly distraught in the ruin of his once-home and, honestly, his frustrations are understandable despite his actions being over-the-top. On top of that, even Kathy chooses to stay with her dad in town against her mother’s insistence that the suburbs were a better place for her to live and grow up. Although much of the film she’s apart from her father, Kathy loves the city just as much as her father does. It’s interesting too that even once she’s kidnapped, Kathy is unwavering in her loyalty to both her father and desire to stay with him in the dangerous city. It’s fair to say that all the characters love New York City – I felt the magic of the first time I went to NYC in each of their characters.

Thematically, the film is very counter-cultural for the 1980s. Although it depicts New York City as crime-ridden, it negatively portrays cops, showing them as effectively useless in a crisis and, ultimately, the root cause for the issues NYC faces. Throughout the kidnapping crisis Sean is facing, the police lieutenant is busy planning and budgeting his daughter’s wedding, too preoccupied to be of any use. Sean himself is a former cop who left the NYPD after exposing corruption within his department; Gus is after a real estate mogul he believes ruined his neighborhood and ran it into the ground, and both of these motivations are textbook anti-Reagan/anti-Republican sentiments, so for a film that’s portraying 1980s New York City, it’s cool to see these ideas work in tandem in a way.

Night of the Juggler is nuanced, fast-paced, and interesting, but despite these positive attributes, it bombed at the box office, making a measly $53,104 in comparison to its $6.5 million budget. So what happened? The Empire Strikes Back had come to theatres a month prior, and the title and marketing tried to capitalize on Star Wars hype, implying it was a science fiction or supernatural film rather than a neo-noir action movie. This didn’t allow the movie’s greatness to be spread by word-of-mouth. Because of that, this movie is a total hidden gem, and I’m glad it’s having a resurgence (and a recent 4K release!) James Brolin’s beard deserves an award, and the crazed lunatic of a villain rivals Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, to the point where I wonder if that’s where he got some inspiration. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes a fun-action flick or even just a movie set in the greatest city in the world.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider becoming a patron of Hyperreal Film Journal for as low as $3 a month!