Bad Boys [DVD]

Forget the nicey nicey film of the same title starring Will Smith, this was made some 15 years earlier and remains today one of the the most brutal, shocking and thought provoking movies I have seen. It follows the story of two rival gang leaders both sent down to a correctional facility where their rivalry continues to a bloody and fatal climax.

Sean Penn delivers a superb performance as one of the gang leaders and I have yet to see him in anything better which is not a criticism, only a tribute to a marvellous film.

Bad Boys is directed by Rick Rosenthal and written by Richard Di Lello. It stars Sean Penn, Esai Morales, Eric Gurry, Alan Ruck, Ally Sheedy and Clancy Brown. Music is by Bill Conti and cinematography by Bruce Surtees and Donald E. Thorin.

Mick O'Brien (Penn), a teenage criminal from Chicago, finds himself doing hard time at the Rainford Juvenile Correction Facility after his latest robbery attempt ends in tragedy. Rainford is not a place where young thugs get reformed, it's where they become harder and more prepared for a life of crime........

Teenage hoodlum movies are notoriously difficult to get right, more often than not, in spite of being riveting viewing experiences, they come off as being exploitive rather than educationally observant. Over the years there have been one or two exceptions, leading the way was Scum (1979), Alan Clarke's scorching appraisal of the British Borstal system, and from America, Rick Rosenthal's Scum influenced Bad Boys starring a pre-fame Sean Penn.

Bad Boys is a rare old beast in the pantheon of young offender movies, it manages to overcome inevitability and primitiveness of plot by giving thought to its central characters, notably Penn's wounded animal protagonist., who remarkably isn't a perfunctory part of the plot. Sense of place, too, is given much attention to detail as Rosenthal gets in tight within the confines of this juvenile facility. Di Lello's script is thankfully free of the cliches that often detract from the drama in a prison based movie, the moral choice heartbeat that pounds away in Bad Boys is never twee or shoehorned in by way of a necessity. The thematics exist on very real humanistic terms. Led by a spitfire turn from Penn, cast are mostly great, with Gurry (engaging), Sheedy (tender), Morales (complex) and Brown (menacing) adding a professionalism not often seen in films of this type.

Problems arise when the film goes outside of Rainford's fences, for it loses some pent up momentum. What made Scum so searing and oppressive was that it never left the Borstal facility, claustrophobia and anger inherent were the order of the day. Bad Boys' makers choose to weld two concurrent stories on the outside, with that of Mick O'Brien's fate, it works in respect of the narrative outcome (which with some annoyance is never in any doubt), but at some cost to the mood created in the bleak interiors. There's also the issues of having to accept the ridiculousness of certain developments in the story. Be it the easy access to substances no real life prisoner would be allowed near, or the leap of faith needed to imagine that the prison authorities would allow the final confrontation to become a reality, we are asked to look the other way in order to get some hefty wallop into the drama.

Violent and unflinching in its emotional honesty, and supremely crafted on both sides of the camera, Bad Boys, one or two hiccups aside, is a first rate drama. 8/10

Not to be confused with a later film of the same name.
This is a great movie. Brutally honest plot, which is really an
eye-opener. Watched this some years ago, and still remember it well.