Review: Dangerously Close

Set in a Southern California high school, where crime and vandalism is becoming an unfortunate frequent occurrence. A student body full of the school’s richest (WASP) students band together as a vigilante gang named The Sentinels, aimed at apprehending the hooligans and keeping the school clean and safe. Or so they say. It turns out that The Sentinels have rather aggressive tactics, and might even be involved in murdering students, possibly even ones who aren’t delinquent in nature. Certainly it is rather alarming that the students end up dead shortly after a visit from The Sentinels. J. Eddie Peck plays a new student (who isn’t rich) and school journalist who is recruited by Sentinels leader John Stockwell (best known as the second lead in “Christine”) to try and paint them in a more positive light. But Peck starts to feel uneasy, especially when his pun, non-conformist best friend Krooger (Bradford Bancroft) suddenly disappears after a visit from The Sentinels. Carey Lowell plays Stockwell’s ex-girlfriend, who begins a relationship with Peck. Thom Mathews plays one of the more conscientious Sentinels, whilst Madison Mason is a school faculty member and the Sentinel’s unofficial Fuhrer, Corrigan who is also a hardened Vietnam vet. Look for Miguel A. Núñez Jr., Robert Rusler, and Deedee Pfeiffer, as fellow students.

Hack auteur Albert Pyun (“Brain Smasher...A Love Story”, “Omega Doom”, “Ticker”, “Mean Guns”, “Dollman”) is one of the worst directors of all-time. This much is known and pretty much indisputable. His films are empty, cheap-looking films lensed in the most cost-effective corners of the globe and usually featuring slumming stars (say Rutger Hauer, Christopher Lambert, or Tim Thomerson) plus his stock troupe of mostly poor actors (like Michael Halsey, Norbert Weisser, and Thom Mathews). However, everyone has a good day, and it appears that Mr. Pyun was having an OK day when he directed this 1986 juvenile crime flick. It’s actually fairly close to being a good film, and among Pyun’s better films, alongside “Cyborg” and “The Sword and the Sorcerer”. It’s not high art (it’s from The Cannon Group, for starters), but for once at least it seems that Pyun is more interested in telling a story than in being stylish. When he does employ style here, it mostly works, although an early knife fight (in knee-deep water and in shadow) is a little too “Cyborg” for what is otherwise not an action film. The funny thing is, if you look at most other reviews of this film, it gets ripped apart by most for being style over substance. Well, for once, I’m not quite in agreement. Sure, the plot isn’t anything you couldn’t find on an episode of “21 Jump Street” (seriously, I think one episode did largely use this plot), but how many Pyun films even have a plot in the first place? Certainly not “Mean Guns” (which was just a bunch of random killers left in a room to try and kill each other for 90 minutes) or “Omega Doom” (at least nothing coherent), that’s for sure.

There’s certainly style here, but aside from some annoying cross-cutting, it’s good stuff. The lighting is absolutely incredible, as cinematographer Walt Lloyd (“Sex, Lies, and Videotape”, “Pump Up the Volume”, “Private Parts”) earns his keep. The opening scene in particular is well-lit, full of fog and forestry, and there’s also some cool angles throughout. But aside from all of this, Pyun actually just tells the damn story, which is somewhere in between “The River’s Edge”, “Lord of the Flies”, and “The Brotherhood of Justice” (the latter being a TV movie about school vigilantes that featured youthful-looking Keanu Reeves, Kiefer Sutherland, and Billy Zane). It might be Pyun’s most ‘normal’, yet most ambitious film to date, as it is a mostly character and ideas-based film, rather than the action flicks he normally churns out. It isn’t all that good, but given what I was expecting, I was pleasantly surprised. I could easily see this having a small cult following. The cast full of C-grade names and faces is pretty damn competent (including Dean Stockwell’s son John and Michelle Pfeiffer’s sister Deedee), though I’ve never been a fan of Carey Lowell, who nearly ruined Timothy Dalton’s best outing as 007, “Licence to Kill”. Having said that, Pyun isn’t much interested in the female characters in this slightly homoerotic film. The standout for me was Bancroft as the crazy, Crispin Glover-esque punk Krooger, who is mannered, but in an entertaining way. You’ll remember him, long after he leaves the film.

If the film has a flaw, it’s that the main character played by J. Eddie Peck (best known perhaps for his stint on “The Young & the Restless” as Victor’s son Cole) is seriously dense. He’s way too slow to catch on to what is going on here, and we spend far too long waiting for him to grow a brain and catch up. The soundtrack, by the way, is pretty cool and full of well-known 80s tunes (Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” among them), the least of which is a typically hideous Fine Young Cannibals song. The screenplay is by Scott Fields and Marty Ross, from a story by Ross and star Stockwell, who deserve credit for some prescience with having The Sentinels record their bullying exploits, ala the disturbing YouTube trend of today.

Look, this isn’t anything great, but by Albert Pyun’s awful standards, this is borderline “Citizen Kane” territory. It actually has a plot!

Rating: C+