directed by:
Lindley Farley written by: Lindley Farley genre: Drama, Action |
Man, does this ever look incredibly authentic! No joke, folks, you’ll start watching “The Bulls’ Night Out” and immediately feel like you’re watching the VHS tape that was balancing out your Grandma’s uneven coffee table for the last two decades. Wild! Not only does it look true to the time period it’s going for as being a “1990s NY Cop Thriller” – but it SOUNDS like it’s from way back then too. You can literally hear the air being pushed outta your speakers in that special way we all used to endure in just about everything that we watched or listened to on tape. Am I interested in this kind of stuff? You betcha! Is it for everyone? Probably not. In a way, it totally could be for many people, because if you’ve been on the planet for about forty years or more, you’ll genuinely feel the nostalgia hit you as you watch this movie. I cannot express just how common it would have been to find something like this back in the 70s to the 90s, but here in 2025, seeing something like “The Bulls’ Night Out” is way more rare. Refreshingly rare if I’m being honest with ya. Oddly enough, according to the write-up that comes along with checking this out online, you’ll see that it was originally released back in 2000. I suppose that’s still close enough to be right in between the past and present…kind of a link between what we watch now, and what we used to.
Written and directed by Lindley Farley, “The Bulls’ Night Out” follows the story of four retired detectives who are tired of watching their neighbourhood go down the shitter. “This is a good neighbourhood, and I hate to see those scumbags chasing the decent people outta here,” says George, who’s essentially the de facto leader of the group. He’s rightly pissed off – any of us would be in his situation, and many of you out there might even know what it’s like to be living in a place gone sour. It wouldn’t be easy to watch the place you’ve called home for years crumble around you…ultimately, I think the theme driving this movie is highly relatable in that regard. In the case of this particular story, the destruction of the city is directly linked to drugs and the criminal element, again, true to the era in that regard. The question is, what do you do when the city you love and call home is being destroyed from within? Do you sit idly by and let the chaos become normalised? Or do you grab your motherf**kin’ baseball bat and handle your damn business like a man? If nobody does something, then clearly nothing will ever change, and the deterioration of society will continue to pick up speed – so you gotta fight back & resist the destruction! It's basically like mob rule, but the mobsters in this instance are actually police…or at least, they used to be. The cops of the present day are nothing compared to the moxie that the old boys used to bring to the streets, and you can see the contempt that George and his crew have for the new guys on the job. They still talk, they’re still civil, but you can tell that they don’t really have a whole lot of respect for each other. These grizzled old buzzards are the original street cleaners, and they don’t take kindly to watching the new generation fumble their way through what comes as common sense to the crew. “Slime, scum, animals” – that’s what they’re dealing with. You could go through the courts, sure – but that’ll take you years to resolve. When you need immediate results, you gotta take your business right to the streets, just like Charles Bronson used to do all the time, or that big ass dude with his 2X4 in “Walking Tall.” “The Bulls’ Night Out” comes from that same, gritty, vigilante justice-inspired mentality, where you’ve got no choice but to take the law into your own hands for the better interests of a shared community. In the background, George is simply trying to help his daughter get married. All around, it’s actually kind of amazing that there is very little hard action to be found in this movie; it’s mainly implied. We know that trouble is always lurking right around the corner, but it doesn’t spend a whole lot of time building the suspense through the empty calories of bullets flying around and a whole lotta guns. It’s more like a case of having to question every person that comes into view, wondering if they’re a friend or an enemy. So when it comes right down to it, the majority of what you’ll see in any scene is fueled by conversation. Is it flawless? In some ways, I feel like you could almost make an argument for that. It was more or less flawless for the time when it was originally released, even though you’d probably argue it’s still about a decade or two late from where it would have been at the height of its potential success. We didn’t quite expect certain qualities in the way that we do now when we consume media. When you’re watching something like this now, it’s hard not to notice how many millions of things you would have seen that would be similar, from all kinds of cop & mobster movies, to just about every episode of shows like “CSI,” “The Shield,” and “Law & Order” that followed. So it’s hard to fault a film when you’ve got a retrospective perspective, you know what I mean? Would I want more out of “The Bulls’ Night Out” as a watcher & critic of movies today? Sure. Would this have had everything we needed back in the late 80s? Absolutely. See the difference? Even the story itself, the community versus the drug pushers and such, was still new enough back then, but now, obviously, that’s just about every second film you might see. Where the look, the sound, and that gritty feel of something like “The Bulls’ Night Out” scores its most significant win is the fact that it’s a throwback film in that regard – you’re not going to see something like this in theatres. Even in the off chance that someone when about trying to recreate this kind of visual vibe, in the modern day era, we’re victims of technology in that respect – as in, even if you could go about making something like this movie now, it would still look way slicker than this does, and it wouldn’t fit the style of film nearly as well as what you’ll see onscreen in “The Bulls’ Night Out.”
As for the storyline, it does get bogged down a little bit by the same lack of action that makes it unique. This is a dialogue-driven film, and if you’re interested in hearing a bunch of old guys reminisce about the old days or the way things used to be, then right on, there’s lots for you to love here. If that’s not something you’d be into, then clearly you might be in for a little more of a struggle with not so much to see. Is it racist? This is where I think there’s a bit more of an interesting debate to be had. You can easily identify a great many scenes, if not almost all of them, that lean seriously hard into stereotypes. No different from your grandfather with a few whiskeys in him, though, you kind of have to make the choice about whether those stereotypes would be considered to be a form of racism, or if what you’re witnessing simply comes from a time where things were different. I tend to think this is a case of the latter. We’re not always going to be comfortable with what people say, what people do, or the music they play through their ghetto blasters and such, but what you’re seeing is an accurate representation of a certain time in human history. I don’t think whitewashing that, or tiptoeing around it, does anyone any favours, and I think you’d have to lean even harder into the stereotypes for this to really be that offensive. Will you have moments where you’ll find yourself wishing there was a bit more happening than perhaps there is? I think that’s fair to say, yes. Whether it’s extended scenes filled with extraneous dialogue, or long sequences of driving & running down stairwells and such – “The Bulls’ Night Out” isn’t exactly the blueprint of tight filmmaking. Even after all that I’ve pointed out, though, I still felt like Farley’s movie was much more watchable – and enjoyable – than I likely would have assumed going into this. George (Jack Marnell) is the largest reason to watch character-wise, but still, even despite all this, I really enjoyed watching “The Bulls’ Night Out.” It’s kind of the quintessential cop-meets-vigilante film, complete with heavy accents, bad haircuts, and undeniable stereotypes that actually add value to an experience like this instead of taking anything away. I’m not here to judge whether something is or isn’t PC – as long as something isn’t outright offensive for the pure sake of being so, I’m cool with watching something that’s true to its vision, the style, and the time. With respect to that, I think you have to give Farley’s movie some serious credit. I’m going with a strong three and a half stars out of five…it’s too old school to be new, but that’s part of its charm. “The Bulls’ Night Out” will bring your nostalgia for great crime capers right back to the surface. |
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