Larry Clark’s follow-up to the controversial Kids offers a more conventional vision of contemporary American outlaws, with blood-spattered violence, profanity-peppered dialogue and tough-guy attitudes. The influence of Martin Scorsese and Gus Van Sant weighs heavily on Clark’s film.
In a characteristically dynamic performance, James Woods is career criminal Max. Melanie Griffith matches his intensity with a quietr but equally impressive performance as his girlfriend Sid, the calming influence to his raging storm. A latter-day Bonnie and Clyde, they live the American Dream of fast cars, easy drugs and perpetual immaturity. Asked to patch up teenage delinquent Bobbie (Vincent Kartheiser), Max adopts him as a surrogate son and progege. Hitting the road with his girlfriend Rosie (Natasha Gregson Wagner), the four become a kind of family, planning robberies and living the high life.
Clark takes us along a well-worn path as events spiral out of control and tragedy inevitably beckons. Grainy glimpses of urban desolation, restless camerawork and bone-crunching assaults imbue the doomed desperados storyling with a raw authenticity.