Somebody needs to stop a gang of drug-dealing, roller-blading neo-fascists who wear baggy 90s suits in dystopian Los Angeles.
Sounds like a job for Corey Haim to me.
He’s a broke pizza delivery guy of the future, half a notch above homeless because he refuses to sell out. He can skate as good as any of the roller-blading racists. Also, the leader of the gang is one of his childhood friends. Still, Haim won’t take the dirty money. The twist comes when his pipsqueak kid brother gets tempted into the life. Now, Haim’s got to go undercover and bust up the whole business from the inside.
The good stuff: Some camp-tastic imagery of the white-coated villains skating together with ice capades-style choreography and a young Patricia Arquette in one of her last B-level movies before she went on to more prestigious projects.
The bad stuff: As an action movie, none of this quite rings the bell. Haim does his own skating stunts, which is impressive until you see that he doesn’t have to do much that I couldn’t do at The Skate World Roller Rink when I was 12. As sci-fi, it’s half-decent for a fully derivative vision. As a good time, you get the sinking feeling that director Rick King wants us to take this seriously.
Random observation: if you tilt your head sideways and squint, this film has a few things in common with Haim’s most famous film, The Lost Boys, except with him in the brooding Jason Patric role (and with a comic relief sibling). Just instead of goth vampires, you get white-clad, young Nazis who try to coax him to their side.