(1986) The Gladiator
THRILLER
A young woman leaves working at a bar and upon her driving home she is then rear ended, chased and pushed down an over path to her death by a black dodge charger. Because it happened in the middle of the night, and that the charger has dark windows, we are unable to see who that person is. Upon the very next day, we are then introduced to Rick (Ken Wahl) working on someone else's Volkswagen. And he then drives it to a dealer with many fine looking cars, and it just happens to belong to a radio talk show host, Susan Neville (Nancy Allen). And during celebrating Rick's little brother, Jeff (Brian Robbins) birthday, Rick promises him he was going to take him driving. And when Jeff is driving Rick's ford dodger pickup with him on the passenger side. He ends up cutting the unknown assailant driving the black charger off, and as a result rear ends him to the intersection so that it would be intentionally hit by another oncoming truck through a red light. Rick's little brother gets killed while he ends up in a coma. He then realizes after attending a "victims of the road" meeting that he is apparently not the only person suffering scars. Motivate him to soup up his truck with the help of his friend, Joe Barker (Stan Shaw) who owns a scrap yard for auto parts. Installing battling rams and a harpoon to become a vigilante called "The Gladiator"- hence the title, coming after aggressive drivers and at the same time get police involve by using a CB frequency channel, while pursuing his little brother's killer as much of the police are worthless particularly Lieutenant Frank Mason (Robert Culp) in charge with both cases particularly the capturing of the crusader of the Gladiator.
Did I mention that the police here are portrayed as useless in which there is not a single traffic cop in sight despite a serial killer driver running loose, using a spear, similar to the one used from a James Bond movie. Some of the action made no sense despite the Ken Wahl character had the opportunity to ram the charger into a much larger truck. And yet some reviewers forgive it's faults because it is an 1980's movie people grew up with.
