Not Tough Enough

In "Friday The Thirteenth Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan", Jason has all too few scenes where it matters much that he's in New York. One of the scenes that's supposed to be a fantasy fulfillment is when he walks down the major road and wrecks the boombox that these punks are listening to. Very reasonably, they get upset, and even though Jason is a horrible legend not that far from the city, no one thinks twice about confronting him in the city.

The punks call out the shitty thing Jason just did, which already undermines their menace. Why don't they just do something about their displeasure, like really come at Jason? There are too many witnesses, maybe? It's not like they realize he could kill them yet. I don't know that they ever learn that to my satisfaction. He's huge, but no bigger than your average Canadian farm boy, of which New York of course has many. It's tame behavior.

Jason's reaction is, I'm sure, supposed to be a priceless moment. He reveals his face to them, and they are revolted and scared enough to run away. Jason then goes about his business, having resolved the conflict without having used violence (which is something he is strangely reluctant to do in the city- maybe he has a history with the NYPD?). I found it to be a very lame moment which makes both Jason and the punks look weak.

Why exactly would he not kill them? Is the reason that, while deeply menacing among small numbers of people, Jason would be exposed as being as vulnerable as the rest of us to a hail of SWAT team-fired machine gun bullets? Jason has to refrain from doing what we want him to see any number of times because of the logical problem of him facing the authorities in force or even ordinary citizens. It's a real problem with this movie.