Mark Reviews Bad Boys (1983).

CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Bad Boys (1983) EMI FILMS 123 MIN

d Rick Rosenthal p Robert H. Solo s Richard Di Lello c Bruce Surtees/ Donald E Thorin lp Sean Penn, Reni Santoni, Eric Gurry, Esai Morales, Clancy Brown, Ally Sheedy

I managed to pick up a weather beaten VHS copy of Bad Boys (not the 1995 Michael Bay film) from a local charity shop, believing that, on the basis of its luridly violent cover image and tag line (“In prison, there is no escape from your enemies”), this would be a sordid little exploitation film with the odd memorable moment and little artistic merit. I was somewhat knocked back to discover that it is in fact an excellent forgotten gem of a prison movie, replete with uniformly accomplished performances, a fine script and a satisfyingly authentic rawness that invites comparisons to British borstal classic Scum (1979).

The story sees low life teenage Chicago criminal Michael O’Brien, here played to broodingly intense perfection by newcomer Penn, botch an attempt to rob a rival gang when his accomplice (played by Ferris Bueller’s buddy Alan Ruck) receives a fatal bullet wound to the chest in the ensuing shoot-out. As O’Brien scrams in his car with police on his tail, he accidentally swerves into the kid brother of rival gang member Paco Moreno (Esai Morales), killing him in the process before being caught by the fuzz and banged up in the local young offenders institute.

Here he works his way to the top of the prison roost by savagely beating the two most feared inmates; “Viking” Lofgren (portrayed with sadistic relish by Shawshank Redemption’s Clancy Brown) and Tweety (Robert Lee Rush) after he witnesses the former aid the latter in the rape of a younger prisoner which concludes with the victim retaliating with a knife and being thrown over the mezzanine railings to his death. O’Brien subsequently becomes the most respected individual among his criminal peers (the “Daddy”, if you will), but things take a turn for the worse when rival Paco rapes and attempts to murder O’Brien’s girlfriend J.D. with the intention of avenging his brother’s death. He is apprehended by the police moments before his accomplice is able to shoot her, and sent to the same young offenders institute as O Brien due to a lack of vacancies elsewhere. The scene is then set for the bloody showdown that marks the film’s finale.

The opening scenes in Bad Boys depicting the mindless violence perpetrated by O’Brien on fellow citizens and Paco’s conflict of interests between his concerned Mother and gangbanging lifestyle literally drip with a grubby realism so often lacking in Hollywood crime stories.

The poverty- wracked neighbourhood inhabited by our protagonist is a warren of seedy alleyways, shadowy streets and cramped, shabby apartment dwellings where the interior walls seem to sweat grime, and are authentic to the point that one wonders if the filmmakers bothered with sets and simply filmed inside real flats. Cash strapped and lacking visible father figures, our characters family background and local surroundings provide a convincing basis for their criminal malaise.

Once he finds himself in prison, the film separates into two strands, one set in the outside world where we learn about the fall- out from O’Brien’s crimes, and the other where we follow O’Brien through his punishing experience of the institution’s regime. Here we are introduced to the inmates and authority figures, most of who are variations on prison movie archetypes (tough prison guards, sadistic bullies, smugglers, lippy head cases etc). However, the performances and skilled writing ensure that the characters don’t descend into tired cliché. It is in these earlier prison scenes where the film holds it’s own against Alan Clark’s Scum with it’s detailed glimpse at the crushing horror’s of prison life and the hierarchical relationships between the inmates.

Eric Gurry’s wise cracking smart arse Horowitz initially provides occasional lighthearted relief from this. Sharing a cell with O’Brien, he befriends the newcomer and explains to him in a sardonically up beat manner the grim realities of their new home and the reasons behind his own incarceration (“trouble was, I torched the wrong three people”). His scrawny child like frame and blatant cheek to other, more physically prepossessing inmates (“most call him Viking, I call him shit for brains”) leave you wondering how his face remains conventionally assembled and his legs unbroken. A further layer of danger is introduced when you suspect latent psychopathic tendencies in Horowitz of which other inmates have more experience in witnessing than O’Brien. The film provides a suitably nasty pay off for this implication when Horowitz booby traps a radio with an explosive that ends up demolishing half of Viking’s face. He then goes postal with a golf club when informed by the boss that he is to spend the remainder of his sentence in solitary confinement.

One of the most impressive elements of the script is the fact that, as with the Horowitz character, all the main players are fleshed out with their own micro narratives within the main plot, the result being that this is a picture populated by human beings as opposed to criminal card board cut outs. Viking, for example, is initially presented as the film’s “baddie”, yet we later discover that he has hidden artistic tendencies, for which he is derided. An image sketched in his notebook of the prison’s barbed wire fence with birds fluttering freely above it remind us that he is as unhappy with his lot as the people he victimises.

For 1983, the bold decision for an American movie to present outlaws in a mildly sympathetic light defied the general consensus held up by Hollywood at the time. This was the decade of cop and vigilante movies (epitomised by the popular Arnie/Stallone/Segal/Norris(?) vehicles) that reflected the reigning conservative politics of the Regan era, whereby audiences frequently enjoyed the cathartic kick of seeing deviants given their just deserts- generally via a bullet through the skull. Though Bad Boys doesn’t hesitate to show O’Brien at his worst behaved, his tenderness and emotion witnessed when he escapes prison to visit his girlfriend following her assault from Paco, bursting into tears upon sight of here ravaged feature indirectly inflicted by his own foolish actions, informs us that for all his considerable personal issues, he has a heart and a soul that could find redemption.

Up until this point, Bad Boys has all the ingredients of a prison movie classic. If it’s narrative feels vaguely more contrived, and its violence slightly less unflinchingly depicted than in Scum, it makes up for this by providing us with more likeable, varied characters and some much needed humour to leaven an otherwise relentlessly down beat tale. However, where Scum climaxes with rape, suicide and rioting, leaving the viewer shaking with righteous indignation come the closing titles, Bad Boys opts for a Rocky (1976) style fight sequence to conclude matters. While this doesn’t ruin the film- the empathy we have by now invested in our protagonist means that his predicament is suffused with tension, it also means that it fails to make the kind of strong and coherent statement that made Scum burn itself into the memories of all who saw it. Where that movie was a searing indictment against the Victorian barbarism of the English youth prison system, which hypocritically talks about “reform”, when all the while inmates are being humiliated, beaten, raped and generally having more crimes perpetrated against them than they could ever inflict on society in a life time, Bad Boys is happy simply to say “prison is shit, so don’t become a violent criminal”.

Having said that, Bad Boys climactic conflict is brilliantly handled by both director Rick Rosenthal and the superb cast. As with the rest of the film, every brutal blow looks eye wateringly painful. As Penn sits on top of his nemesis clutching a spike poised to be driven through his head, with on lookers chanting “Kill, kill, kill” and the sympathetic prison councillor looking on in horror, I could feel myself begging O’Brien to come to his senses.

To conclude, this is one of the most pleasant (if thats the correct word for it) movie related surprises I have experienced in quite some time, and sets the bar pretty high in terms of finding the best obscure film out there in video land.

Verdict 85%