The Rage Reviews

Weighed down by a subplot about internecine FBI rivalry, this gruesome serial-killer flick is guaranteed to make your skin crawl with its obsession with grisly murder details. (That is not intended as a recommendation.) FBI agent Nick Travis (Lorenzo Lamas) has been butting heads with superior officer Taggart (Roy Scheider) ever since Taggart interfered in a standoff with gunmen, precipitating an unnecessary massacre. When mutilated corpses of tourists start turning up in the Pacific Northwest, Taggart is forced to pair Travis with up-and-coming profiler Kelly McCord (Kristen Cloke). Travis and McCord discover that the murdered tourists were merely a warm-up for a revenge war planned by discharged soldiers whose V.A. psychiatric rehabilitation program has been cancelled. Led by a depraved ex-CIA agent named Gacy (Gary Busey), the dozen disgruntled veterans plan to massacre military and governmental officials at a nature retreat. McCord is captured by Gacy's militia, and though Travis rescues her, Taggart removes the two agents from the case. As Taggart's team follows a false lead elsewhere, Gacy's militia invades the retreat. Despite having been taken off the case, Travis and McCord trail Gacy and blunt his attack. Gacy and his girlfriend capture McCord and flee by boat. Travis follows and boards Gacy's boat; in the ensuing fight, McCord is freed while Gacy and his girlfriend are killed. Realizing that Travis's suspicions about Gacy were correct, power-mad Taggart travels to the outskirts of the nature retreat. Not content to share the glory of Gacy's demise, Taggart aims his weapon at Travis; providentially, a local sheriff shoots Taggart to death. Slammed across energetically, this ill-conceived militia opus will fail to satisfy its one potential audience, antigovernment zealots. Contributing to the movie's moronic approach is the central figure of Gary Busey, a star so over-the-top he can never be taken seriously. Even if the film had better acting, THE RAGE would still suffer from such plot incredulities as survivalists practicing on tourists for a political assassination and a career FBI chief attempting to murder an agent who was willing to give him credit for a major case solution. Logic is not this film's imperative; sadism propelled by Busey's eye-popping menace is the real raison d'etre. (Graphic violence, extreme profanity, sexual situations, substance abuse.)