Eye of the Tiger (1986) on Netflix
Buck Matthews, a Vietnam veteran, comes home from prison to his wife Christie and daughter Jennifer. A motorcycle gang controls their town, and the sheriff will not help him.
- Netflix1.9/5
- IMDb5.7/103,051 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes20%
Trailer
Plot summary
After his release from prison, Vietnam veteran Buck Matthews goes back to his hometown to begin again with Christie, his wife, and Jennifer, their five-year-old daughter. He finds the town under the control of a motorcycle gang. That evening, at the construction yard where he used to work, he hears a nurse scream and uses his truck to drive off the bikers attacking her. Blade, the gang's leader, takes the intervention personally. The sheriff gives Buck no help, so he turns to J.B. Deveraux, a deputy who fought beside him in Vietnam, and to Jamie, a drug kingpin he protected in prison.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Eye of the Tiger (1986)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For Gary Busey, Eye of the Tiger began what he called the third stage of his career: after drug and alcohol addiction ballooned his weight to 240 pounds, he dropped to 180 through swimming, weightlifting and a low-carb diet supervised by bodybuilder Franco Columbu, and it became his first action vehicle.
- Eye of the Tiger was marketed as inspired by the hit song "Eye of the Tiger" (made famous by Rocky III), but that was a publicity gimmick: it began as a spec script called Midnight Vengeance by Westlake Village screenwriter and Vietnam veteran Michael Thomas Montgomery.
- Montgomery promoted his scripts without an agent, sending out promotional posters and cold-calling about 100 production companies across the U.S. and Canada; roughly half responded and fifteen offered in-person meetings.
- To promote the film, Montgomery bought a full-page ad in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety on his own dime; the Reporter ran it, but Variety refused, purportedly because it carried his partially unverifiable allegations about a lawsuit settlement against the makers of Smokey and the Bandit.
