Another action thriller that’s a fun watch–despite a couple of major plot holes–is 1980’s Night of the Juggler. It stars James Brolin as former New York City cop-turned-truck driver Sean Boyd, a divorced dad with a 13-year-old daughter, Kathy (Abby Bluestone). Kathy is mistaken for the daughter of a rich real estate developer and is kidnaped by the crazy and quite racist Gus Soltic (Cliff Gorman). Soltic blames the real estate mogul for the decline of his Bronx neighborhood and wants a million-dollar ransom.
The chase scene at the beginning of the movie is a sight to behold. Boyd sees his daughter being forced into a car and the pursuit begins. First on foot (that man can run), then he hails a cab (driven by Mandy Patinkin doing some sort of accent), and it’s a thrill ride through the streets and pavements of New York that ends in a crash. The sheer choreography of this chase is a sight to behold. How the filmmakers pulled it off is a mystery. It’s also a snapshot of the Big Apple back in the day, with grime, crime, and possible trouble around every corner.
Soltic abandons his stolen car, and the chase continues to the subway, but not before he drops something in front of a peep show parlor that is picked up by one its employees (adult film star Sharon Mitchell). Boyd jumps the turnstile at the subway and is grabbed by a policeman, who he punches and escapes from. Boyd moves on to grabbing a preacher’s car–with the preacher in it–and crashes it, also.
Although it seems Boyd possesses the stamina of a long-distance runner, the police eventually catch up with him. He runs away and heads for the adult venue and retrieves what Soltic dropped. It is a dog ID tag. A vengeful dirty cop, Barnes (Dan Hedaya, chewing the scenery), goes after Boyd for revealing his corruption during their days on the force. He chases him with a shotgun, disregarding how he could hurt people in the crowded streets, as he shoots numerous times at Boyd and misses.
Boyd goes to an animal shelter, where a kind worker named Maria (Julie Carmen) helps him get the address of the dog’s owner. Barnes shows up and literally goes to the dogs. Comeuppance is sweet! Boyd and the now enlisted Maria take a taxi but are followed by a Puerto Rican gang upset that one of their own is with a white man. The Energizer bunny (oops, I mean Boyd) takes them all on and escapes to a cab. This leads to the final showdown of Boyd and Soltic in the bowels of New York.
Richard Castellano of The Godfather fame shows up as a police lieutenant to provide some comic relief, and soap star Dorothy Lyman (All My Children) has a tiny part. The major plot hole in the film may be why Soltic never asks who’s the man that keeps chasing him. His victim has already told him he has the wrong girl. She even calls Boyd “Daddy” when he gets close to them. Soltic doesn’t put it together? And when they board the very crowded subway, why doesn’t Kathy just start screaming “I’m being kidnapped”? Never let the details get in the way of good chase scenes. Incidentally, the film’s terrible title comes from Soltic saying tax cheats always juggle their books, and now he’s going to be a juggler, too. Guess it beats Night of the Tax Cheat.