Jan Michael Vincent and Kris Kristofferson star as two brothers trying to clean-up a California town. We can tell they are related because they both sure do squint a whole lot. They squint and they don’t button their shirts.
Vigilante Force holds the record for the most unbuttoned shirts in a single film. Before you get too excited, let me add that all of these shirts are worn (or semi-worn) by males. Normally, in a film like this I would expect it to be the females who suffer from a button shortage, but we don’t even get glimpse of topless-female panic during a brothel raid.
This film is rather restrained. Vigilanter Force is ripe hickploitation material, but it never really pushes the limits of taste. Things heat up when it is clear that Kristofferson is no savior. The last third of the film builds to a brother vs. brother, action showdown worth sticking around for, even if you don’t like shirtless dudes or squinting. There’s also an amazing stock of kooks and background characters, not to mention some rather nice hand-held, camera work during a street fight that could be mistaken for documentary.
