Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (September 3, 2024)
Back in 1979, a movie about battling gangs called The Warriors created controversy. Though it received less attention, that same year’s Boulevard Nights touched on similar topics.
While Warriors didn’t become a box office smash, it nonetheless turned a profit, perhaps aided by all the controversies that surrounded it. Nights got no similar bump, so even with a low $2.5 million budget, it lost money.
Though it enjoys a strong cult following, I never really got the appeal of Warriors, as I thought it seemed campy and silly. This left me open to the possibility that Nights might provide a more compelling look at the street gang culture.
Set in East LA, former gang member Raymond Avila (Richard Yniguez) tries to go straight and establish a life within the law. However, his younger brother Chuco (Danny De La Paz) remains embroiled in that culture.
Their family bonds get tested when rivals go after Chuco’s gang and tragedy results. This launches a full-blown war in the neighborhood, one that involves Raymond whether he likes it or not.
Nights director Michael Pressman debuted with 1976’s Roger Corman-produced drive-in fare The Great Texas Dynamite Chase. This then got him promoted to a prominent studio flick via 1977’s Bad News Bears in Breaking Training.
The original 1976 film became a hit, and it still holds up all these years later. While it did fine at the box office, Training proved less successful, and although I still enjoy it for nostalgic reasons, it suffers from a lot of cinematic issues and doesn’t offer a well-made movie.
Nights clearly represents Pressman’s attempts to make “serious films”. Afterward he did land some big-name projects like 1982’s Richard Pryor drama Some Kind of Hero and 1983’s Dan Aykroyd comedy Doctor Detroit.
Neither did especially well, and Pressman spent most of the rest of his career as a TV director. He occasionally popped up on the big screen via junk like 1991’s goofy sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II but he mainly directed TV dramas.
I offer this long-winded introduction to Pressman’s career to indicate that one probably shouldn’t expect cinematic greatness from him. Pressman defined “journeyman filmmaker” and it seemed unlikely Nights would reveal talent that then lay dormant for decades.
As noted on the Blu-ray’s case, Nights enjoyed inclusion in the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2017. It seems highly probable that the movie gained this honor due to its then-novel view of the LA Latino working class milieu and not because of its cinematic quality.
I say that because beyond any cultural significance, Nights simply doesn’t offer an actual good movie. Slow and trite, the film lacks much punch.
Even prior to 1979, we’d gotten skillions of stories that touch on this one’s themes. A tale of someone who wants to escape the dangers of his environment but who finds that difficult due to family issues didn’t break ground 45 years ago.
If Pressman managed to bring some spark to the proceedings, this wouldn’t matter. However, he depicts the drama in a slow, stale manner that robs the narrative of any real spark.
Really, Nights focuses much more on melodrama than true drama. It plays all its events in a broad manner and leaves us with caricatures in terms of its roles.
Put simply, I never cared about Raymond, Chuco or any of the movie’s other characters. They lack personality and seem like nothing more than generic examples of film stereotypes.
While I can appreciate that those behind Nights attempted to create an authentic look at a particular culture, the movie itself never distinguishes itself in any other way. This winds up as a forgettable drama that never goes anywhere we can’t predict.
