Vigilante Pics

Vigilante is a 1983 film directed by William Lustig. It stars Robert Forster and Fred Williamson.

Eddie Marino is a factory worker in New York City. He has a wife named Vickie and a eight-year-old son named Scott. Eddie's friend and co-worker, Nick, and two other co-workers have formed a secret vigilante group because Nick and the group are fed up with the pimps, gangs, and drug dealers who keep taking over the neighborhoods. Nick and his group are also sick and tired of the police, because the police always fail to protect people who become victims.

Eddie returns home from work one night, only to discover that Vickie has been stabbed, and Scott has been shot dead in a home invasion led by a street gang that Vickie encountered earlier. Frederico "Rico" Melendez, the leader of a Puerto Rican street gang, is arrested for Vickie's stabbing and Scott's murder. Assistant District Attorney Mary Fletcher plans to put Rico away for as long as possible, since New York doesn't have the death penalty. Nick tries to convince Eddie to join the vigilante group, but Eddie turns Nick down, preferring to let the courts handle Rico. Nick makes it clear that he has no faith whatsoever in the police and the judicial system. Nick turns out to be right; the case against Rico doesn't make it past the arraignment. After Rico's corrupt lawyer, Eisenburg, argues for the case to be dismissed after Rico pleads guilty to Vicki's assault, but not guilty to Scott's murder, the corrupt Judge Sinclair sets Rico free with a two year suspended sentence. Eddie goes crazy and tries to strangle Judge Sinclair, who sentences Eddie to spend 30 days in jail. It was actually Rico's sadistic right hand man, Prago, who had fired the shot that killed Scott while Rico was the one who stabbed Vickie. Prago also bribed Judge Sinclair, as well as Eisenburg, to set Rico free.

With Eddie in prison, Nick and his group try to track down the source of drugs that have been sweeping their neighborhood. Nick chases after a small-time drug dealer whom they rough up who points him to his supplier; a local Manhattan pimp. Nick and the group follow and confront the pimp and torture him to reveal his drug source and the pimp points them to a high-ranking member of the New York mayor's office.

In prison, Eddie befriends an inmate named Rake (Woody Strode) who saves him from being gang raped in the showers. As soon as Eddie is released from jail after serving his 30-day-sentence, he changes his mind about Nick's vigilante group. Eddie willingly joins the group so he can track down and kill Rico, Prago, as well as Judge Sinclair. But will Eddie's quest for revenge trigger an all-out street war between them, the gang, and the incompetent police?