SPEEDWAY JUNKY (M). (Golan-Globus) Director: Nickolas Perry Stars: Jesse Bradford, Jordan Brower, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Daryl Hannah, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, Patsy Kensit, Warren G, Jason Uhrich Running time: 102 minutes.
This grim tale of street wise hustlers plying their trade on the neon lit streets and back alleys of Las Vegas ultimately smacks of a teenage version of Midnight Cowboy.
Teenage runaways are drawn to the glittering dreams and neon lit promises of Las Vegas, only to find that the reality fails to live up to the promises. Many struggle to survive, and turn to hustling tourists for quick money. New to this unfamiliar and dangerous world is Johnny (Jesse Bradford, from Far From Home, etc), an army brat who has run away from home, hoping to gain work with the pit crew of a NASCAR car racing team.
He lands in Vegas for a temporary stop, but a series of misadventures sees him stranded without any money or clothes. He is taken in by Eric (Jordan Brower), a gay teenage hustler who works as part of a street gang. Eric also introduces him to the world of casual sex for money. Johnny just wants to make some quick scores so he can leave Vegas and follow his dream. He also meets Veronica (Daryl Hannah, cast against type), a drug addict and hooker with a heart of gold, who is something of a surrogate mother to Eric.
Johnny is initially uncomfortable with Eric and his preference for casual, meaningless gay sex, but slowly a strong friendship develops between the pair. However, their involvement with Steven (Home Improvement's wise cracking Jonathan Taylor Thomas), the street wise, bisexual hustler who owes money, eventually brings about tragedy. The downbeat climax is inspired by Midnight Cowboy.
Speedway Junky is the first film from writer/director Nikolas Perry, a former post-production assistant who worked on films such as Bram Stoker's Dracula. Perry's direction is quite restrained, and there's no hint of unnecessary exploitation here. This low budget tale of gay teen hustlers ventures into territory made familiar by Star Maps and the little seen Johns. However, Perry doesn't provide many insights into this sleazy world, nor does he pass judgement on the actions or decisions of his characters.
Perry imbues the film with a seedy ambience and squalid reality, but there is also a vague sense of unreality to the whole thing. Speedway Junky is a more sanitised view of life on the mean streets than the provocative Hustler White. The involvement of Gus Van Sant as executive producer also lends the film overtones of My Own Private Idaho.
Van Sant's involvement has enabled the tyro director to attract a stronger cast than one would otherwise find in a low budget feature dealing with such subject matter.
Most surprising of all is the casting of Thomas, whose swaggering performance is a far cry from his previous roles. Patsy Kensit (Lethal Weapon 2, etc) is wasted in what amounts to little more than a brief cameo.
Despite some solid performances and some great location work on the streets of Las Vegas, this sordid and uncomfortably seedy drama ultimately lacks appeal.
** greg king http://www.netau.com.au/gregking
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews