Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects (1989)

User Rating:

4.7/10   

Director:

J. Lee Thompson

Writer (WGA):

Harold Nebenzal (written by)

Release Date:

3 February 1989 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

Desire. Temptation. Revenge

Plot:

A Tokyo businessman (Hiroshi Hada), transferred to L.A, molests a teenage girl (Amy Hathaway) on a train...

Plot Keywords:

Prostitution | Bus | Child Rape | Drug Overdose | Racism

Cast

Charles Bronson	...	Lt. Crowe
Perry Lopez	...	Eddie Rios
Juan Fernández	...	Duke
James Pax	...	Hiroshi Hada
Peggy Lipton	...	Kathleen Crowe
Sy Richardson	...	Lavonne
Marion Yue	...	Karuko Hada (as Marion Kodama Yue)
Bill McKinney	...	Father Burke
Gerald Castillo	...	Capt. Tovar
Nicole Eggert	...	DeeDee
Amy Hathaway	...	Rita Crowe
Kumiko Hayakawa	...	Fumiko Hada
Michelle Wong	...	Setsuko Hada
Sam Chew Jr.	...	McLane
Sumant	...	Pakistani hotel clerk

Runtime:

97 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (TVC)

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Singapore:M18 | Australia:R | Iceland:16 | West Germany:18 | New Zealand:R16 | France:-12 | Norway:18 (video premiere) | USA:R | UK:18 | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:R (Ontario) | Germany:BPjM Restricted

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Golan-Globus Productions

Trivia:

The last movie Charles Bronson made for Cannon Films

Goofs:

Continuity: The car in the Harbor Scene in which Crowe (Bronson) and his partner sit is smashed up twice by the car crane .

Quotes:

Duke: I'm dying!
Lt. Crowe: No you're not... But you are gonna have to stick your head between your legs to tell the time.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Slanted Screen (2006)

Soundtrack:

Palazio Grande

The last in the line of truly depraved '80's Bronson films

The '80's were not very kind to one-time major star Charles Bronson. Starting with 1982's "Death Wish II" and ending with this truly gruesome film from '89, Bronson's screenwriters seemed to be trying to top each other in progressive grossness. "D.W. II" left little to the imagination in its depiction of the rape and suicide of Bronson's character's daughter, (a rape and murder of his housekeeper was also shown in disgusting detail). "10 to Midnight" was the sort of loathsome film that made you want to take a bath afterwards. Nothing redeeming about it. Other films like "The Evil that Men Do" and the remaining "Death Wish" films from this period straddled the line between high camp and high barf with their earnest depictions of brutality and revenge. I'm not sure if the producers (usually Pancho Kohner) got a kick out of showing a weary looking, senior citizen-aged Bronson destroying punks young enough to be his grandchildren or what, but the shoddy craftsmanship (and terrible scripts) of these films usually destroyed what little energy they may have generated.

"Kinjite" -- the last of these films -- is fairly well-made but truly takes the cake in cinematic wretchedness. In this film Bronson: sodomizes a perverse john; forces a pimp to eat his Rolex watch; allows a male prisoner to get raped by another prisoner; makes incredibly xenophobic remarks among other things I've thankfully forgotten. Also depicted is the gang-rape of a young Japanese girl (fortunately, this was off-screen, though well-implied).

What were people thinking when they made this film? What was Bronson thinking when he decided to ruin his career with these horrible films? For anyone interested in his best movies, check out most of the films he made in the '60's and '70's like "The Mechanic", "Death Wish", "From Noon til 3", "Once Upon a Time in the West", "Red Sun", "The Great Escape", "The Magnificent Seven", "Rider on the Rain", etc., etc....