It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Blistering performances.

The Gladiator (1986) made for TV movie really dose get a great job done and teaches us a lesson. The car that was used in this movie by the psychopath who was driving black 69 Dodge. The similar car was later used in TV movie Wheels of Terror with Joanna Cassidy in the main role. I thought The Gladiator movie used the car as maniac murder by Wheels of Terror but i was wrong. Wheels of Terror used the story of the car from this movie. I watched Abel Ferrara 's movie when i was a child and it was really good awesome movie. Haven't seen this movie for about 15.years until today, i watch it the first time on YouTube someone upload it.Ken Wahl and Nancy Allen made outstanding terrific cast as the main actor and actress in this movie. The Gladiator (1986) is a decent road action flick that made a job well done. I wish that today they would make movies like this now. The most shocking is when the psycho push and hit Rick and Jeff in the truck and Rick's younger brother dies. That could be true because so many people died like on this way on a road when accident happened, it really did shocked me, than his brother put that anger and become a vigilante and a road warrior "The Gladiator" seeking justice. Chasing the most dangerous drunk drivers that cost accidents on a road and kill so many innocent people and cops call's The Gladiator a criminal? I am lost if The Gladiator really would exist he could stop drunk criminals. 2.years ago in Slovenia second main city Maribor a young fellow drive drunk and was speeding he drove out of the road went to the plant his car jump off the grass in the air and he hit a young mother who was pregnant at the time with her second child. All what he got was 2.years and 1.month of prison and that murderer did not even apologize to the family of victims, no he didn't. After he woke up with a little injuries in his head and realizing what he did he took his plate off the car and fled the crime scene. He did not call ambulance not police officers or fireman's zero. He let the poor young mama dieing in cold blood. Slovenia is horrible you can do anything here , in my country there is no justice and if The Gladiator really would exist, he would stop this psycho murderer yes he would. I am giving this movie higher rank even for 80's action drama flick I am glad i watch this movie and i can download from torrents.Another thing: I said before The Gladiator teach us a lesson and i am right, drunk driving is dead dangerous. I watched another movie in 80's License to Kill not a Bond film but a Drama movie with Denzel Washington who he was playing a young lawyer who was prosecuting a drunk driver murderer who caused a car accident and killed a young graduate teenage girl and who was getting away with it. They were showing us what someone who is drunk can do behind the wheels. That movie was really great i watched 2.years ago on TV i missed the beginning but i went watching it anyway. Today drunk driving nobody takes serious nobody.I watched Death Proof Quentin Tarantino's film and it is the most boring stupidest unreal movie ever made, it dose not compare to this movie. I so so so wish they would still make movies like this today. I miss the 80's The Gladiator really touched me and i will watch this movie again. 10/10

I love Abel Ferrara, but I'm guessing he was slightly high when he accepted this gig and had some bills to pay?? No that's cruel. Although the film stock and general production values of this are shoddy and televisual, Ferrara's gritty aesthetic just about peers through the sanitised veneer of this one. His mechanic best buddy is a nice character, and there are a few unintentional laughs to be had. Overall though, if this was your first insight into abel ferrara, then it would be a bad one to pick...Choose Ms.45, King of New York, Bad Lieutenant or Fear City instead....I believe Tarantino's segment of the forthcoming film GRINDHOUSE is about a killer, hit-and-run car.....I'm sure he's seen this one then! I also had the (mis)fortune of watching BLACK MOON RISING on the same day!? Also about cars/car chases/the fetishisation of driving souped up cars in the US. Is this the direction that Tarantino is travelling???.....

When one thinks of the singularly raw, gritty and hard-hitting cinema of Abel Ferrara (who's rough'n'tumble films include "Driller Killer," "Ms.45," and "Bad Lieutenant"), several scattered idiot box credits aren't the first thing to spring to mind. But back in the mid-80's the often fiercely indie and underground Ferrara briefly went mainstream and somehow wormed his way onto the boob tube, where he directed the "Crime Story" pilot, a few episodes of "Miami Vice," and this fairly generic, yet miraculously rough-edged and compelling made-for-TV feature. Ken Wahl of "Wiseguy" TV show fame gives a somewhat stolid, but overall acceptable and engaging performance as an amiably zhlubby blue collar ordinary shmoe ace automobile mechanic whose younger brother gets killed by a drunk driver in a sinister black muscle car. Haunted by his bro's untimely death and angry as all hell, Wahl builds himself a lethal souped-up tow truck, hits the dark, hazy, perilous Los Angeles nocturnal streets looking for that spooky muscle car, and winds up becoming a self-appointed vigilante who takes out all those leering, unruly, bellicose, recklessly inebriated killers on wheels who pose a general threat to decent, law-abiding folks on the road with them. Naturally the cops want to nail Wahl real quick and the media turns him into a folk hero.Okay, so the plot is little more than a vehicular "Death Wish" variant crossed with "Duel" and the picture does suffer somewhat from unavoidable mild'n'middlebrow TV movie sanitizing (the sporadic sappy pop-slop tunes mewling away on the soundtrack are especially irritating), but Ferrara's strong, sturdy and stylish direction certainly compensates for these minor flaws. As usual with Ferrara, he takes a provocative questioning stance with the obsessive, tormented protagonist, vigilantism is properly addressed as the knotty, nothing remotely simple or easy about it issue that it really is, James Lemmo's slick, polished, glittering neon-hued cinematography vividly depicts a luridly gleaming nighttime atmosphere, and the palpable evocation of the scary, forbidding and dangerous urban hellhole jungle setting positively seethes with a frightfully omnipresent menace. Moreover, there are fine supporting turns by Nancy Allen as a sweet radio talk show host, the always reliable Robert Culp as a hard-nosed detective, and Stan Shaw as Wahl's nice dude best buddy, David Frank supplies an effectively spare, shivery, jazz-flavored score, and the final showdown between Wahl and the muscle car delivers the pulse-pounding, heart-stopping, metal-mangling auto-to-auto stand-off goods. Sure, it's not exactly one of Ferrara's best-ever offerings, but this generally solid and satisfying item sure ain't no lemon, either.

I was in sixth grade when i first saw this movie, it had everything i was looking for in an "automobile chase" movie, at that time that was what i was into, roadwarrior etc.....It had the drunk on revenge main character....who soups up his truck to take down drunk drivers after his brother gets hurt by one. And not to mention the standoff automobile fight scene in the end that would make vaughn from crash, pass out in ecstasy.did i mention that i loved able ferra movies before i even knew who he was?!If you ever get a chance to see this vehicle vigilance movie. then do so. Other wise you will miss his really cool harpoon gun.