Movie Review: Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Genre: Horror

Director: Stephen King

Starring Emilio Estevez, Pat Hingle, Laura Harrington

Running Time: 98 minutes

Synopsis: When a rogue comet passes close to Earth, machinery runs amok. Small appliances, pop vending machines, lawn mowers, and large trucks murderously turn against humans. Survivors congregate at a truck stop in Wilmington, North Carolina, including cook-with-a-troubled-past Bill (Emilio Estevez), his insufferable and exploitive boss Bubba (Pat Hingle), feisty hitch-hiker Brett (Laura Harrington), and a youth baseball player. Surrounded by menacing large trucks, the humans have to survive and fight back.

What Works Well: Stephen King (adapting and directing his own story) has the imagination to create a dusty corner of a world-gone-mad, and does not hold back on the gore when the machines go bad. The angry large rigs produce menacing horsepower, amplified by a loud and proud AC/DC soundtrack.

What Does Not Work As Well: Despite the inviting concept, King is unable to generate meaningful suspense, self-awareness, or even a basic sense of bewildered fun. The characters are exceptionally superficial, the dialogue is a lethal combination of juvenile and plastic, and the acting is cartoonishly frantic. The context is established in the opening screen and receives no further elaboration, leaving the numerous explosions in the final act to generate numbness rather than excitement.

Conclusion: Engines rev loudly but idle in place.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Public (2018)

A drama about the plight of the homeless, The Public tackles a serious subject with sensitivity and some humour, but unsurprisingly flounders for a resolution.

Cincinnati is in the grips of a cold snap. Librarian Stuart Goodson (Emilio Estevez), recovering from a troubled personal history, is on friendly terms with the community of homeless people who seek warmth at the Central Public Library. Junior librarian Myra (Jena Malone) and security officer Ernesto (Jacob Vargas) work with Stuart, and Anderson (Jeffrey Wright) is their boss. After Stuart befriends neighbour Angela (Taylor Schilling), his job is threatened by district attorney Josh Davis (Christian Slater), who blames Stuart for exposing the library to a lawsuit launched by a mistreated customer.

On a particularly chilly night, homeless man Jackson (Michael K. Williams) organizes a group of homeless people into refusing to leave the library at closing time, insisting it should remain open as a shelter. An unusual siege ensues, and police crisis negotiator Bill Ramstead (Alec Baldwin) is called in. Stuart is thrust into an unexpected media spotlight and wrongly portrayed as a hostage taker by conceited local television reporter Rebecca Parks (Gabrielle Union).

Packed full of plot, characters and incidents, the first half of The Public is full of ambition. Writer, director, co-producer and star Emilio Estevez holds nothing back in spotlighting the now tragically prevalent social failure of homeless people in ever larger numbers struggling for the basics of survival. The setting is Cincinnati, but the story equally applies to many other major cities.

With notable efficiency, Estevez ties together several key characters to the core topic. Stuart himself is not far removed from a life on the streets. Neighbour and new romantic partner Angela is still batting down corrosive addictions that bedevilled her past. And crisis negotiator Bill Ramstead is looking for his missing son in church basements. 

Characters like library boss Anderson and junior librarian Myra are full of good intentions to save the world and save others, but their actions in response to the library takeover will define their essence. Meanwhile, wannabe mayor Josh Davis is the representation of nauseating politicians seeking power through the expediency of soundbites and simplistic solutions to complex problems.

The script is unfortunately less successful in defining the homeless group. They are scrubbed clean of most dangers and reduced to harmless tourist depictions. The more fundamental narrative weaknesses come to the fore after the library takeover. Estevez does not seem to have a clear course to chart, and the second half drags, unnecessarily stretching the running time to over two hours, with a lot of people sitting around and not doing much of anything.

An intractable problem predictably settles for a climax exposing, if only for a night, the failure of policy makers to care for their community's most vulnerable members. The Public strips away the excuses, but also stalls in the stacks.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Repo Man (1984)

A laidback and subversive science fiction thriller comedy, Repo Man is all fun and games, including when people die.

In Los Angeles, anti-authoritarian youth Otto Maddox (Emilio Estevez) quits his menial supermarket job, and is then recruited by Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) to become a car repossession agent, stealing vehicles from customers who have fallen behind on payments. Meanwhile, a mysteriously sweaty man (Fox Harris) is driving a 1964 Chevy Malibu with dangerous alien-related cargo in the trunk, attracting the attention of government Agent Rogersz (Susan Barnes) and UFO conspiracy theorist Leila (Olivia Barash).

Under Bud's guidance Otto enjoys life as a repo man, and gets to know Bud's associates including Marlene (Vonetta McGee) and the alien-obsessed Miller (Tracey Walter). He also tangles with local business rivals the Rodriguez brothers. When a $20,000 reward is offered for the retrieval of the Malibu, Otto finds himself in the middle of a wild and high-stakes chase.

An often bizarre mix of alien conspiracy adventure, imaginative science fiction and anti-establishment punk thriller with attitude to spare, Repo Man stands alone. An independent production written and directed by Alex Cox, the film creates its own rules, including a fierce dedication to burn down every product placement opportunity and a commitment to snarl in the face of preconceptions about where the narrative is supposed to go.

While patchy in parts, sometimes disjointed and almost entirely devoid of context, Repo Man is stubbornly loyal to its version of nihilism hiding around the next corner. And so Cox, through the character of Bud, creates a code for career repo men, and of course it's a behavior standard that none of Bud's associates or rivals seem to remotely care for. Instead Otto is dropped into a wild world where theft is an actual job, and discovers a perfect fit for a punk without a cause, give or take a few chases, shootings, and radiation-induced instant incinerations.

And it's no surprise that as the insane worlds of aliens-in-the-trunk and repo men collide, the seemingly close-to-mad Miller, who spends his days burning other people's personal belongings retrieved from repossessed vehicles, slowly emerges as the most rational character. He is in tune with the possibilities of past, future and present actually being one, and as all others lose their minds, Miller is already there.

With Emilio Estevez willing to stand his ground against all comers and Harry Dean Stanton chasing the illusion of dignity in his suited attire, Cox steers Repo Man to a suitably beyond-wacky conclusion, the underbelly of a scrappy Los Angeles a perfect venue for the next automotive generation.

All careers enjoy highs and lows, but nothing compares to the out-of-this-world intensity of repossessing cars in a car-obsessed town.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Stakeout (1987)

A police buddy comedy with action and romance, Stakeout benefits from star charisma but remains a shallow exercise in lightweight entertainment.

Violent criminal Richard "Stick" Montgomery (Aidan Quinn) breaks out of prison with help from his cousin Caylor Reese (Ian Tracey). In Seattle, police detectives Chris Lecce (Richard Dreyfuss) and Bill Reimers (Emilio Estevez) are assigned to stake out the house of Montgomery's ex-girlfriend Maria McGuire (Madeleine Stowe) on the chance he may try to reconnect with her.

Chris and Bill try to fight off boredom by trading juvenile pranks with fellow stakeout detectives Pismo (Forest Whitaker) and Coldshank (Dan Lauria). With his wife having just left him, Chris starts to get attracted to Maria, and finds excuses to get into her house pretending to be a phone repair technician. They start a romantic relationship without Maria knowing who Chris really is. Meanwhile, Montgomery evades law enforcement and makes his way ever closer to Seattle.

A prototypical 1980s high concept blockbuster, Stakeout relies much more on glitz and magnetism than plot and logic. Written by Jim Kouf and directed by John Badham, the film sketches in characters and events with the broadest brushes, then relies on Richard Dreyfuss and to a lesser extent Emilio Estevez to deliver the laughs and thrills.

The premise of spying on an available beautiful woman then falling in love with her is a young boy's voyeuristic dream scenario, and Badham is happy to exploit the juvenile opportunities on offer. Maria undresses and showers on cue as demanded by prying eyes, and falls in love quickly with the mysterious telephone repair man who appears at exactly the right moments.

The villain Montgomery is the extreme definition of ruthlessly one-dimensional, and as such a good catalyst for danger to coalesce around him. When it comes time for action Badham delivers the requisite jolts of adrenaline, including a couple of over-the-top car chases and a climax at a lumber processing plant with lethal machinery at work.

Despite the dreadful soundtrack filled with lame 1980s pop rock, the movie is delivered with slick proficiency augmented by banter and comic touches courtesy of inter-police prankterism. And at the middle of Stakeout is Dreyfuss, a long way from his classic roles but infusing much needed doses of quality. Neither the actor nor the movie aim for much beyond basic fun, and both do enough to maintain active surveillance.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Emilio Estevez

All movies starring Emilio Estevez and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Badlands (1973, uncredited extra)

The Outsiders (1983)

Repo Man (1984)

The Breakfast Club (1985)

St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Stakeout (1987)

Young Guns (1988)

Mission Impossible (1996, uncredited)

The Public (2018, also Director)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Young Guns (1988)

A western with a cast dominated by a batch of up-and-coming Hollywood male stars, Young Guns is a fairly faithful account of Billy the Kid's early days. Rampant youthfulness dominates the film but cannot make up for the lack of depth.

It's the 1870s in Lincoln County, New Mexico. English cattle rancher John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) specializes in rescuing troubled youth, giving them jobs and an education at his ranch. His latest recruit is young Billy Bonney (Emilio Estevez), a boyish and cocky troublemaker who has apparently already killed a man. Billy joins the other ranch hands in Tunstall's employment: the romantic Doc (Kiefer Sutherland), the serious Dick (Charlie Sheen), the half-Indian Chavez (Lou Diamond Phillips), the appropriately nicknamed Dirty Steve (Dermot Mulroney) and his friend Charlie (Casey Siemaszko). Collectively they call themselves the Regulators.

Tunstall is locked in a nasty dispute over control of the cattle business with Lawrence Murphy (Jack Palance), who has bought the law and is trying to monopolize the local industry. Tunstall has an ally in respected lawyer Alexander McSween (Terry O'Quinn), but this does not save him: Murphy's men kill Tunstall in cold bold. The Regulators vow revenge and are initially deputized to act as lawmen, with Dick assuming a leadership role. But Billy has his own version of dispensing justice, and starts killing rather than arresting men associated with Murphy, further inflaming what became known as the Lincoln County War.

Young Guns forms a cactus pack of sorts to maraud across the west, the six Regulators boasting the presence of Sheen (Platoon), Phillips (La Bamba) and Sutherland (The Lost Boys) soon after their break-out roles. Estevez was already hot property with the success of Stakeout, Repo Man, The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire. It is an impressive collection of burgeoning talent, and Young Guns is brimming with the potential of ambitious young men. That some of their hairstyles and mannerisms are more suited to the 1980s rather than the 1870s does not seriously diminish the available enjoyment. Estevez gets the showiest role as Billy The Kid, and he enjoys the self-propelling wild-eyed thrill that comes with leaving morality to one side and just engaging in mischievous killing.

The story itself is a slightly fictionalized account of a real and violent dispute characterized by mindless tit-for-tat killings, where men with more guns than brains tried to muscle each other out of the cattle business, and violent revenge took precedence over justice. It was fertile territory for the likes of Billy to shoot first and ask no questions, and director Christopher Cain inserts scenes of well-staged, noisy and often violent gunfights at regular intervals throughout the movie.

It's when the guns are silent that the film is caught short. After the relatively early demise of John Tunstall, the John Fusco script struggles to find a weighty presence capable of carrying the movie. The Regulators are young, naive and simply not very interesting people when they are not engaged in shooting or being shot at. The elementary attempts at some meaningful exchanges of dialogue are quickly blown into the winds of shallowness.

And so Young Guns awkwardly gropes around trying to find various methods of killing time between the action set pieces. Doc falls in love with Murphy's Chinese slave; Dick and Billy compete for the group's leadership, Chavez sneers at everyone who insults his ethnicity, and Dirty Steve spits a lot. None of it is deep, and all of it is mundane.

A rough and ready supporting cast does succeed in bringing to life some real wild west characters. Lawman Pat Garrett (Patrick Wayne), Sheriff William Brady (Danny Kamin), frontiersman Buckshot Roberts (Brian Keith) and outlaw / bounty hunter John Kinney (Allen Keller) make brief but often noisy appearances to play their roles in a nasty little war.

Young Guns fires away at the legends of the west, generating plenty of energetic movement but limited substance.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

A post-graduation coming-of-age drama and one of the essential Brat Pack movies, St. Elmo's Fire is crowded with stereotypes but nevertheless captures the angst of transitioning from the campus to the real world.

Seven friends in their early twenties are facing life soon after graduating from Georgetown University. Alec (Judd Nelson) and Leslie (Ally Sheedy) are living together, and while he is working as a political aid and ready to get married, she wants to wait. Kevin (Andrew McCarthy) is an aspiring writer and frequently hangs out with Alec and Leslie. Kevin's roommate is Kirby (Emilio Estevez), who has ambitions to study law but currently works as a waiter at St. Elmo's Bar, the group's favourite hang-out.

Billy (Rob Lowe) is the bad boy, a saxophone player with no career path, already estranged from his wife and infant child. Nevertheless, Wendy (Mare Winningham), a social worker, is deeply in love with him. Finally, Jules (Demi Moore) is a party girl and already sucked into a materialistic life she can't afford.

Alec can't help but cheat on Leslie as he waits for her to agree to get married, while Kevin harbours a secret crush on another member of the group. Kirby openly lusts after Dale (Andie MacDowell), a doctor who graduated a few years earlier, and starts stalking her. Billy and Wendy have a falling out, and she comes under pressure from her father (Martin Balsam) to marry a boring man and get into her family's greeting card franchise business. Jules seeks a short-cut to financial stability by starting an affair with her married boss. As the seven struggle to deal with the responsibilities of adulthood, their friendships are stretched to the breaking point.

The seven characters of St. Elmo's Fire are undoubtedly self-centred, over-dramatic, and generally quite irritating. Not one of them appears to have charted a logical emotional or career path, and their behaviour is more suitable to snotty high schoolers than university graduates. Allowing for the film's tilt towards the dysfunctionally exaggerated, St. Elmo's Fire does deliver some succulent drama. There is enough romance, lust, and irresponsibility going on to fill a few seasons' worth of guilty pleasure television, and director Joel Schumacher packages his movie with glossy wrapping paper and the nostalgia of early adulthood, when every little independent decision seemed like a monumental moment.

The script, by Schumacher and Carl Kurlander, creates characters that are vivid and memorable rather than unique. Each of the seven represents a broad societal pie slice, and there is no holding back on the amount of filling. Billy's rebel without a cause is all long haired, ear-ringed, unfocused imprudence, Wendy's goody two-shoes dresses like the Mayflower pilgrims, and Jules' slutty material girl lives life according to a Madonna soundtrack. Kirby's infatuation with Dale would qualify as a crime outside a movie script, but here is played for laughs, Kevin's dreamy-eyed long-haired aspiring writer drips idealistic romanticism, and Alec's out of control libido would condemn him as a sex addict. Leslie just barely qualifies as closest to rational, but even she quickly hops into a bed with a new lover at the first hint of a fight with Alec.

With the subtleties being pummeled, there is no need for textured acting, and no one ever accused the Brat Packers of excellence in the performing arts. Fulfilling the function of pretty faces representing their generation's excesses rather than intense dramatists, the seven actors dive into their strictly defined roles and embody them energetically, without ever moving beyond the obvious. Nelson, Lowe and Moore get to stretch the most, but even they are confined to stock displays of anger generated by hormones adjusting from the campus cocoon to the cold real world. Estevez, as a little boy lost in a horrible role, suffers the most.

The theme song St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion) is quite outstanding. Written by David Foster and performed by John Parr, it is overused throughout the film, but does capture the energetic anguish of responsibility. In St. Elmo's Fire growing up is hard to do, but at least it looks and sounds good.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Outsiders (1983)

The adaptation of S.E. Hinton's youth-in-peril novel, The Outsiders is a sombre affair. Francis Ford Coppola finds the drama amongst the scrappy youth caught between childhood and adulthood, but cannot locate the soul of their anguish.

It's 1965 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Greasers are a gang of tough kids from broken homes on the wrong side of the tracks. Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell) is quiet and sensitive but still a Greaser, while his eldest brother Darrel (Patrick Swayze) is violent and struggling to cope with head-of-the-family responsibilities now that their parents are dead. Middle brother Sodapop (Rob Lowe) is often caught between Ponyboy and Darrel. Ponyboy's best friend is the knife-wielding, baby-faced Johnny (Ralph Macchio), and the other Greasers include Two Bit (Emilio Estevez), Steve (Tom Cruise) and Tim (Glenn Withrow). The unofficial leader of the Greasers is Dallas (Matt Dillon), who has only recently been released from jail.

While walking home, Ponyboy is attacked by members of the Socs, a rival gang of wealthier kids. Later, after Ponyboy and Johnny spend some time with middle-class girls Cherry (Diane Lane) and Marcia (Michelle Meyrink), the Socs show up to settle scores. With Ponyboy outnumbered and almost being drowned by the Socs, Johnny springs into action and uses his knife to kill one Soc and scare away the others. Dallas helps Ponyboy and Johnny to escape and hide-out in an abandoned church. But the Socs want revenge in the form of an all-out brawl between the gangs, while Ponyboy, Dallas and Johnny encounter an unexpected opportunity for heroism that takes a tragic turn.

Coppola assembled what proved to be quite the spectacular cast of young talent for The Outsiders. Rarely has a film brought together so many young actors who would go on to have long and successful careers. Ironically, Howell and Macchio, the two most prominent Greasers, would eventually have relatively lower profile adult success compared to Cruise, Swayze, Dillon, Lowe, Estevez and Lane. The talent on display enhances The Outsiders, as even small roles like Two Bit, Sodapop and Cherry are well worth watching.

In terms of the drama, The Outsiders recounts a sad story but without finding a spark to elevate it onto any sort of emotional plain. The Greasers are deserving of empathy, kids cast adrift with not a capable parent in sight, but not enough is ever revealed about them to make them anything other than kids who are likely to get into trouble. There are some touching and quiet moments as Ponyboy and Johnny hide out in an isolated church for several days, reading Gone With The Wind and sharing their innermost thoughts, but the serenity is delivered at some cost in plausibility: street-tough 14 year old kids suddenly behaving like rational adults requires quite the mental leap.

And the film cannot do much to overcome the weaknesses and derivatives in the original narrative. There are some strong whiffs of Romeo And Juliet without the romance and West Side Story without the music, while the brawl appears to mostly serve as an artificial kinetic jolt to enliven an otherwise downbeat final 60 minutes.

The 2005 "Complete Novel" re-release, a director's cut by another name, reinserts deleted scenes and adds 22 minutes to the running time. Most of the additions occur at the front end to better establish Ponyboy, the Greasers, and the context of the gang rivalry, creating a more cohesive experience. However, the complete abandonment of Carmine Coppola's evocative orchestral score, replaced by contemporary high-tempo mid-1960s hits, is a change with debatable merits.

The Outsiders has talent behind and in front of the camera that surpasses the material. The Greasers are worth a look, but the experience is not all that slick.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Breakfast Club (1985)

A coming-of-age high school dramatic comedy, The Breakfast Club is a sharply defined study of five memorable characters under stress. With the feel of an intimate play and career-defining performances from the young cast, director and writer John Hughes established his reputation as the voice of youth and mentor for a new generation of actors.

It's Saturday in suburban Chicago, and five Shermer High School students have to spend the entire day in detention as punishment for poor behaviour. Andy (Emilio Estevez) is the jock on the school wrestling team, Claire (Molly Ringwald) is the princess primarily interested in shopping and make up, Bender (Judd Nelson) is the psychological bully from a rough home, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) is the nerd, and Allison (Ally Sheedy) is just weird. The five barely know each other. Under the supervision of assistant principal Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason), they are confined to the library for the day and ordered to write a 1,000 word essay each.  But with Bender as prime catalyst and mood disruptor, they do little writing and plenty of talking.

Initially the conversations are difficult and confrontational, and there is plenty of teasing, insulting and acrimony. But over the course of the day, they get to know each other, including uncovering family backgrounds and the reasons why they all ended up in detention. As they try to stay one step ahead of Vernon's authoritarianism, the green shoots of respect and understanding begin to appear within the group.

Written by Hughes and pulled together as an ensemble piece on essentially a single set, The Breakfast Club delves into the anxieties of teenagers, scraping away the hardened outside shells to find real people inside. As the external postures are stripped away, surprising commonalities are found, emotions are shared and previously unthinkable bonds are allowed to form under the umbrella of shared burdens.

The Breakfast Club is not without its creaky moments. The pacing is episodic, with the emotions and confrontations that are laid bare in one scene frequently all but forgotten in the next. And the ending, with sudden attractions materializing, appears rushed and predetermined for the sake of generating some warm kisses and unconvincing romantic sparks.  And assistant principal Vernon is just too deserving of any trouble that the kids manage to dish out.

But to the sounds of what became the generational anthem Don't You (Forget About Me) by the Simple Minds, the five young actors overcome the weaknesses in the script with outstanding performances, Judd Nelson leading the group. Bender is the troubled kid convinced despite all contrary evidence that he is tougher than his surroundings, and Nelson plays him with a cool eyed intensity that never wavers. He is merciless in picking on Claire, but is smart enough to stop just short of assaulting Vernon when fully afforded the opportunity. Nelson explores the coiled internal tension that only comes from an abusive household, as Bender's restlessness means that he cannot help but stir things up to spread the misery. Hughes explains Bender's attitude but never softens him up into a victim or a potential reformed kid.

Molly Ringwald, just 16 when filming The Breakfast Club, embodies every popular, rich, pretty girl more interested in friends, shopping and hanging out than reaching out or stretching academically. Ringwald brings a tough naiveté to Claire, a privileged girl fully enjoying the entitlement of coasting through high school and not having to deal with neither effort nor kids like Bender. On this Saturday Claire has to share time and space with a group of students that are typically beneath her, and Ringwald conveys vulnerability as an easy target but also a gradual awakening to new realities.

Allison is the most opaque character, and Ally Sheedy nails the dark kid who hovers like a ghostly presence at the back of the room. Allison is the slowest among the group to reveal herself, and she just gets weirder and more interesting the more she opens up, the pieces of her puzzle adding to the confusion rather than assembling into a whole.

Andy and Brian are the relatively straightforward personalities, Emilio Estevez projecting uneasy conflict as he walks the line between being trying to be cool and stepping in to protect Claire from Bender's browbeating. Anthony Michael Hall further develops his screen nerd persona, trying to fit in but always just a little bit clumsy in his social interactions. Andy and Brian find common ground when they both admit to the enormous pressure they feel from their parents to perform, Andy on the wrestling mat and Brian on all his exams.

In baring the souls of five disparate characters, The Breakfast Club shines as a unique examination of the teenager, and as an impossible to forget film experience.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.