You can just imagine how they tried to sell this one. Two Oscar winners Tatum O'Neal and Irene Cara team up together in this very trashy, b-grade urban action-thriller exploitation; a modernized mould of "THE DEFIANT ONES".

After a full-on, adrenaline-fueled first half-hour of courthouse slaughter, bullets spray the screen, panic erupts and bloody exchanges occur. Escaping that frenzy the girls end up in the city's sewers fighting the underground elements, running from the authorities who want their blood and getting on each other's nerves, as sparks fly between two prisoners that couldn't be any more different in all walks of life. On the run they go, trying to survive, being wrongly fingered as accomplices to what went down. One costly mishap after another puts both in dangerous predicaments on the dirty side of town.

I thought this was going to be great; formulaic, yeah, but what an excessive opening with strong stunt-work. Instead by the time it hit the halfway mark, it had already peaked. There it becomes uneven, the tension from then onwards (other than the crackhouse fight) had little impact as scenes go on longer than they should and eventually it meandered to the (lousy) finish line. Sometimes it wanted to have its cake and eat it too, dipping into both half-baked exploitation and serious drama. The latter does get manipulatively cheesy by trying to strike up an emotional chord; like the (unnecessary) scenes with one of the girl's father (Cara). Even the low-brow dialogues make it hard to take seriously. Although I did like the combination between O'Neal and Cara, even though the character details are predictably wear-worn, yet their interactions engage, from the callous remarks/or actions to their growing bond. Both stars weren't afraid to get down and dirty, but while not particularly likeable O'Neal did standout in her hardened, street smart hooker turn. Someone who didn't is a paycheck collecting Peter Fonda who appears in one of the most ridiculously unconvincing staged moments in the film involving a nail-filer.

Tough streetwise hooker Scarlet McGinnis (a winningly scrappy performance by Tatum O'Neal) and clean-cut first time offender Tracy Freeman (an appealingly earnest portrayal by singer Irene Cara) find themselves in court together. The radically contrasting distaff duo wind up on the run from cops and criminals alike after they survive a courtroom massacre.

Director Stephen Gyllenhaal keeps the entertainingly trashy story hurtling along at a snappy pace, maintains a harsh sleazy tone throughout, stages the lively and exciting action set pieces with flair, makes neat use of various grungy locations, and delivers oodles of excessive bloody violence along with a smidgen of gratuitous nudity (yep, Irene Cara takes a shower and almost gets raped). The eventful kitchen-sink script by Michael Jacobs throws a fun array of obstacles at our desperate protagonists that includes everything from rats to exploding sewer gas to drug dealers. O'Neal and Cara display a pleasing sparky chemistry in the leads; they receive solid support from Nicholas Campbell as wormy low-life slimeball Sniffer, George Murdock as the crusty Lt. Speier, Moses Gunn as Tracy's ineffectual surgeon dad, and Peter Fonda as nasty underworld bigwig Rodney. Kees Van Oostrum's slick cinematography provides a nice polished look. The bouncy synthesizer score by Russ Kinkel, George Massenburg, and Bill Payne hits the rousing spot. A real grindhouse blast.

Badly acted, written, and directed, Certain Fury provides a fair amount of unintentional laughs. Tatum is the 'bad' girl, Irene the 'good' girl gone bad. One of the funniest scenes had Tatum spitting in Peter Fonda's face. He responds by slashing her face (in unconvincing close-up) with his nail file. When she falls to the ground screaming, he blurts out to his hench-men, "Get this bleeding bitch off my boat!" If you like 'good bad films' then this one is for you. If you prefer quality...well then you've been warned.