Plot Summary
After a long stint in prison Buck Matthews (Gary Busey), a Vietnam veteran, returns to his old hometown to start his life over with his wife Christie (Denise Galik) and their five-year-old daughter Jennifer (Judith Barsi). However, he learns that the small town where he grew up is overrun by a large motorcycle gang that rides through the town in large numbers, harassing various citizens. On his first night back to his old job at a construction yard Buck hears a woman screaming in the distance. He follows the screams to discover a large group of bikers attacking and attempting to rape a local nurse. Buck manages to chase the gang off using his truck thus saving the nurse's life. The leader of the biker gang, Blade (William Smith), takes Buck's actions personally and begins to terrorize his family and him. The following night, the gang attacks the Matthews' home, beating Buck and killing his wife. This leaves Jennifer, his young daughter, in shock as she witnessed the entire event.
The local sheriff (Seymour Cassel) holds a grudge against Buck for some reason that is never explained in the movie, so he refuses to help Buck, leaving him with no other option but to take justice into his own hands. Buck then calls in a favor from an old friend named Jamie (Jorge Gil), a Miami-based Columbian drug kingpin whom Buck saved his life in prison during a riot some years back and who was also paroled with Buck in the opening scene. Buck receives a high tech truck, equipped with machine guns and mortars. Buck's friend, J.B. Deveraux (Yaphet Kotto), a local deputy who is also a Vietnam veteran, fills Buck in as to the history of the motorcycle gang. The sheriff is shown to be in cahoots with the motorcycle gang as Blade and his men give the sheriff bribes of cash to ignore their activities.
Soon, Buck and J.B. team up together and begin to retaliate against the bikers through various means. Buck uses a wire to string out onto a road to decapitate at least two of the bikers. He lures another small group to their deaths by exploding his old truck when they attack it, as well as shoot more at random whom they witness committing crimes in and around the town.
Eventually the bikers kidnap Jennifer from the hospital, forcing Buck to go to their camp in the desert outside of town. Buck, with the help of J.B., flying a bomb-dropping crop-duster airplane, successfully defeats the gang and rescues his daughter. In an explosive climax, Buck has the local sheriff killed (it seems the sheriff framed Buck for a murder committed years earlier) by offering him as a target for the gang, and then has a one-on-one fistfight with Blade which ends with the death of the villain when he accidentally ingests cocaine the gang is manufacturing. With their leader dead, the surviving motorcycle gang members ride away.
The film begins and ends with the song "Eye of the Tiger" played over the credits.
Read more about this topic: Eye Of The Tiger (film)
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