Back when I was a teenager, I would always get the entertainment section out of my dad’s Sunday paper so I could check out the movie listings. I was mainly looking for information about my favorite movie star, Charles Bronson. Nowadays, we know about new movies months, even years, in advance, but back then I would learn about them from the entertainment section of dad’s paper. One Sunday in early 1989, when I was 15 years old, I saw an advertisement for a new Bronson film called KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS. It was the first time I had ever heard of it. I knew I wasn’t going to get to see it at the movies because it was only playing in Little Rock, but I was excited anyway because it would be on its way to video soon!

In the film, Bronson plays police Lieutenant Crowe. Along with his partner Eddie Rios (Perry Lopez), he deals with the sleaziest criminals in Los Angeles on a daily basis and it’s starting to take a toll on his personal life. He’s currently invested in bringing down an underage prostitution ring led by Duke (Juan Fernandez) and Lavonne (Sy Richardson). When Japanese businessman Hiroshi Hada’s (James Pax) young daughter is kidnapped by Duke, Crowe decides he must do everything in his power to get her back to her family.

KINJITE reunites Bronson with director J. Lee Thompson for the ninth and final time, bringing to an end what I think is one of the more underrated actor-director partnerships of the action genre. Bronson had first worked with Thompson on the fun mystery film ST. IVES at the peak of his 70’s career. By 1989, Bronson was in his late sixties and understandably slowing down on the action front, but he still possessed that unmistakable presence on screen. He’s more invested in his performance as the prejudicial Lt. Crowe than he’s usually given credit for. There’s one specific scene where he goes off on a group of Japanese businessmen and women who are holding up traffic in front of a large hotel. It’s one of Bronson’s strongest scenes of the 1980’s as he yells various traffic code violations, and obscenities, at the surprised guests. It’s a bad moment for his character, but a well-acted moment for Bronson.

None of Bronson’s ‘80’s action films were based on stories about sunshine and roses, but the subject matter of KINJITE is particularly dark and ugly. Themes of child exploitation, human trafficking, sexual violence, and prejudice are all given screen time in a world that’s so corrupt that only someone as committed as Lt. Crowe is even capable of taking on the evil that’s presented here. Crowe is not necessarily a good man, and his sense of justice goes completely overboard at times. For example, in one scene where he catches a pervert preparing to commit an assortment of depraved sexual acts on a young prostitute (played by Nicole Eggert), Crowe says “I’m going to show you what it feels like to be one of these girls,” and we, along with his partner, hear the screams off-screen as he honors his word. In another scene, he makes the pimp Duke eat a giant Rolex watch, which prompts the trafficker to say, “I’m gonna die…” None too concerned about Duke’s health, Crowe casually tells him, “No you won’t, but you will have to stick your head between your legs to tell the time.” This is not a well-adjusted human being, but with all the evil acts being committed around him, you still can’t help but root for the guy.

The supporting cast around Bronson is quite good. Juan Fernandez is a standout as the despicable pimp, Duke. There’s something about Fernandez that just makes him great as a bad guy, as he had proved a few years earlier in the Oliver Stone film SALVADOR. His character here has this odd energy about him that oozes evil. Veteran character actor Perry Lopez, who had worked with Bronson going all the way back to the 1954 western DRUM BEAT, provides the aging icon a solid partner who helps smooth out his character’s roughest edges. Their scenes together are very strong because they feel like two weary detectives and old friends trying to deal with a world they’re both sick of.

While I think Bronson provides a good performance and that Thompson provides solid direction, I wouldn’t rank KINJITE among the star’s best 80’s films. It tries to juggle a lot of difficult themes and wants to comment on cultural differences, built-in prejudices, and sexual deviance, and it also wants to deliver the kind of action that audiences expected from Bronson’s Cannon films. It’s a well-made film, but the results aren’t completely effective because it can’t find the right balance between the serious dramatic themes and the expected action heroics. In the end, the events depicted on screen are too disturbing for the film to qualify as fun, escapist entertainment, but they’re not handled with enough depth for the film to make any sort of serious statement. The film ends up making you pretty darn uncomfortable, so I don’t revisit it as often as I do other Bronson / Thompson collaborations like 10 TO MIDNIGHT and MURPHY’S LAW.  

Based on the dark subject matter I’ve described above, I can’t give KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS an unreserved recommendation like I do so many other Bronson films. But as the final collaboration between Bronson and J. Lee Thompson, it does carry a certain historical significance. And for fans interested in seeing the darker side of Bronson’s film career, it remains a memorable, and unsettling, final chapter in one of action cinema’s most enduring partnerships.