Bad Ass (or "Bad Buttocks" if you want to work less blue) has Trejo as Vega, an aging Vietnam Vet who encounters a couple skinheads bothering an old man on the bus. He stands up for the old man, the skinheads attack him, and he takes them down. The whole thing was captured on video, so he becomes a viral sensation. Later, his best friend is murdered, and the police seem not to care, so he takes the law into his own hands. As he digs deeper, looking for his friend's killers, he starts to uncover a plot that goes all the way to the top, which includes local crime boss Charles S. Dutton and mayor Ron Perlman. Can our hero Bad Ass take all of these people down and get justice for his friend?
Overall I really enjoyed this one. Trejo is great, it's a role that you feel like only he can play, and he delivers exactly what you'd want from that. The interesting thing is this is inspired by a real life incident--which I'd seen before and thought might have had some similarities to this, but I wasn't sure--but in that original incident, you had an old white man who beats up a younger black man who's giving him a hard time. I think the decision to make it a man of Mexican descent who beats up two skinheads harassing an old black man instead of an older white man beating up a younger black man was a great one, as it gets us out of that stereotype of black and brown young men being the scourge of the community, and what it then does is allows the film to use whoever they want for baddies without treading on those tropes. There were some moments that didn't work for me, like when Trejo wants information out of one of the guys who killed his friend, so he shoves his hand in a garbage disposal and runs--it something I think we could've done without--but that was a minor issue, and as I said above, I think this was great overall.
30 films and a Hall of Fame induction for Mr. Trejo. Not bad at all, and while the volume of his films has jumped up quite a bit, we don't often get to see him in the lead like this, which was why I wanted to cover it for this post. He gives you everything you want in a role of this caliber, there's the endearing quality of his age, his outfits, his fanny pack--more on that in a bit--while at the same time, there's the authentic Trejo bad ass-ery that we look for and love to see. With the number of films he's done now, and how many of those overlap with other big names on the site, his tag count will only go up from here, but I think with him officially being a Hall of Famer now, we can go to more of the smaller number of movies like these where he's the lead. Truly one of the all-time greats, this probably should've happened before, but we're making it happen now, and giving him his due on our site.
How bad ass is Trejo's character? He reads a map while on the bus. This is known as one of the biggest no-nos when visiting a city, police and other travel advisors will tell you over and over, don't read a map out in public. It shows you don't know where you are, that you're not from the area, and probably naive and too trusting, which makes you easy pickens for any baddies out there looking to do you harm. I think the idea wasn't to show how bad ass he was by looking at the transit map though, it was more to show how most younger people would look these things up on their phone, but for me it reinforced his bad ass-ery, because he's flaunting his lack of concern that anyone would do him harm by seeing him look at the map on the bus like this. "Yeah, I don't know where I'm going, but if you think you're going to victimize me, go ahead." My advice if you're coming here to Philly is don't do what Trejo's doing, but rather buy a busted up Phillies cap to make yourself look more local. Also, later in the film, they use the bus chase from Red Heat with Charles S. Dutton stealing a bus bound for Las Vegas, and Trejo giving chase in one bound for San Diego. As someone who uses buses and trains for inter-city travel, the idea of having to wait out that delay while they find another bus sounds dreadful, and I feel for all those poor passengers stuck at the bus station while these two characters smash their way around LA in the buses they were supposed to be taking.
In our Cyborg Cop and Cyborg Cop 2 posts, we discussed David Bradley's fanny pack. In the first film it totally betrayed how cool his hero was supposed to be; and then in the second film, they were just making fun of the fanny pack from the first film the whole time. This movie reinforces why the fanny pack idea was so bad in Cyborg Cop. It's being used here to make Trejo's character more endearing and unassuming, but it's also ironic that an older fella who keeps his stuff in a fanny pack could kick people's asses so much. As Kathy Griffin said in the late 90s when she was a judge for the MTV lip sync show during Spring Break, "fanny packs aren't outdated, they were never in," and then she proceeded to give the wearer of said fanny pack, a bushy, be-goateed contestant, a zero for his performance. But if anyone could make a fanny pack work, it's Trejo under the right scenario, and he pulls it off.
Finally, I've only been to LA a couple times, so I haven't seen a lot of it, including the shot above from the opening credits with all the establishing shots of LA accompanying it. It's a Felix the Cat car dealership, something I hadn't seen in anything about LA before and didn't know existed. What you may not know about me is I don't drive, so I have no need to buy a car, but if I did, and I lived out in LA, I'd definitely buy from a Felix the Cat car dealership. The IMDb trivia had more info on it, saying that when the dealership opened in the early 20s, the owner, also named Felix, was friends with Felix the Cat creator Pat Sullivan, and they decided to promote each other's brands. Now the dealership is the longest running in LA, and both it and Felix the Cat over 100 years old. I mean, how do you not love Felix the Cat? One of the best cartoon characters ever. I need to go back to LA to catch a Dodgers game at some point anyway, but now I feel like I'll have to find my way over to check this out as well.
And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can get this on most free streamers, including Tubi. With the tight, 90-minute runtime, fun story and fun Trejo performance, streaming it free is a great deal, and worth checking out. And here's to Danny Trejo, one of the all time greats, finally joining two exclusive DTVC clubs, the Hall of Fame and the 30 Club.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1928330
Looking for more action? Check out my new novella, Bainbridge, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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