"What a feeling..." Irene Cara must have thought. "Just a few years ago I was performing and winning Oscars for acclaimed musicals like "Fame" and "Flashdance", and now I'm undressing myself and racing through sewers in a cheap & sleazy exploitation B-movie!". "Tell me about it..." could have been the reply by Tatum O'Neal. "...Ten years ago, I had world at my feet for winning an Oscar as a 10-year-old in "Paper Moon". Now I'm depicting a street prostitute with a foul mouth in a cheap & sleazy exploitation B-movie."
Well, there's one advantage. People like me have zero interest in watching movies like "Flashdance" or "Paper Moon", but I am on a mission to watch as many cheapy and sleazy exploitation B-movies from the 80s as much as humanly possible! The starring of the two leading ladies with a slightly more glamourous background, plus a brief appearance by the charismatic Peter Fonda, make "Certain Fury" a curious must-see oddity for the fans.
What several other reviewers already stated is truthful. "Certain Fury" is a solid and vastly entertaining actioner; - or at least for a while. It's a story about two girls on the lam. They understandably panicked, following a brutal and unforeseeable incident in court, but now they're considered as hardened criminals and there isn't a way back. The first half hour is fantastic, and I genuinely thought I had stumbled upon one of the roughest and most violent flick since "Chained Heat" and "Escape from New York". The extended opening sequences in the courtroom and the subsequent escape through the dangerous sewers are top-notch entertainment. It's grim, bloody, relentless, and fast-moving. Loved it.
The whole concept collapses like a feeble house of cards shortly after that, however. A slowdown of pace was inevitable, I guess, but "Certain Fury" turns into a dull, melodramatic, and whiny mess instead. The girls seek refuge in the apartment of an abuse boyfriend/pimp, escape via numerous rooftops, end up in a massive drug house, etc. Oh yeah, they also become BFFs along the way, of course. The performances of both Cara and O'Neal are admirable, and Stephen Gyllenhaal (later responsible for the excellent "Paris Trout") is clearly a gifted director, but the script is full of really bad dialogues and unevenness. Watch it until after the sewer gas incident, and you've got yourself 20 minutes of genuine, unhinged exploitation.
