AMERICAN PUNKS

(a.k.a. GENERATION X-TINCT; GENERATION XTINCT)

Nail (Ron Ramsey) is a black youth whose petty drug habit has landed him in debt with local gangster Chachi (Bobby Drew). Chachi collars Nail on a street corner one afternoon and beats him, threatening worse to come if he doesn't get his money shortly. Nail makes matters worse for himself by saying his white friend Bobby (Mike Passion) will protect him. Not amused, Chachi welcomes this threat and vows to take on anyone who dares cross his path.

The following day Nail meets with Bobby and the two hang out bored in their car. When local yuppie Thunder (Ron Wicks) walks by, Bobby decides to entertain his friend by throwing food in the well-dressed man's face. They then tear away giggling in their car like little kids.

Later that afternoon Bobby and Nail go for lunch at the Steak Hut. While Bobby takes a dump, Chachi - who's been following them - sneaks into the empty diner and stabs Nail to death. When Bobby finds his friend dead he's distraught - and things get worse when he's arrested and detective Holmes (Lonnie Jackson) tries to pin the crime on him.

Understandably irate after these events, Bobby is released on bail and gathers together his dope-smoking friends Raven, Leaf and Dolphin to help him fathom who killed Nail. As the four slackers drunkenly piece together Nail's last known movements, they come to the conclusion that Thunder must have stabbed him as revenge for the food incident.

After a chance encounter with Thunder in a local bar, Bobby discovers his name and address ... and plans retribution. He and his three aimless friends go round to Thunder's house one evening with the intention of teaching him a lesson in violence - but Thunder proves to be more than they bargained for and kicks the crap out of them, leaving one of them dead. When Holmes later investigates, Thunder is able to convince him that he acted in self-defence.

The following morning, Bobby is led to local gangster Chachi's house to hideout from the police. Bobby asks Chachi to get him a gun so he can go and sort out the man who killed his good friend Nail.

It doesn't take Chachi long to realise that Bobby is the friend Nail had threatened him with, and that Bobby is oblivious to the true identity of Nail's killer. And so Bobby's strife grows and grows as he falls out with his remaining friends, is wanted for a murder he didn't commit and is used as a pawn in Chachi's cruel games. But Bobby is a volatile character at the best of times and sooner or later he's bound to snap ...

AMERICAN PUNKS was a pleasant surprise. The title and cover artwork had me fearing it would be populated with characters sporting Mohawks, skateboards and designer tattoos - you know, the Rancid-era contrived notion of what constitutes "punk rock". But, aside from a rousing punk-metal score, PUNKS is thankfully more about disillusioned teenagers with nothing to do and even less to look forward to.

Bobby is a loser - a hopeless slacker with even less worthy friends. Their collective lack of focus is frustrating in its authenticity, but amusing from an outsider's viewpoint: the banality of teenaged life comes across well through these well-written and strongly acted stereotypes.

Mike Pacitto's direction is gritty and realistic, while Passion dominates the screen with a raw, untempered performance that threatens explosions of violence yet - typically of it's teenaged origins - is incapable of manifesting itself satisfactorily. He's a wounded soul, a pointless addition to the blank x-generation ... and worse still, he knows it.

All in all, AMERICAN PUNKS relies more on keenly observed performances, some wonderfully grainy photography that perfectly captures the decayed poverty of the characters' neighbourhoods and quick, angry dialogue. Any action is infrequent and, while competently staged, certainly secondary to the storytelling. The film benefits from this and as a consequence avoids treading a predictable path.

The film is presented uncut in it's original 1.66:1 aspect ratio. It's a pretty grainy affair, no doubt due to the low-budget origins rather than a flaw of the transfer itself. Colours are washed out and images are somewhat soft, but the urban immediacy of the subject matter helps the film to get away with this raw look.

The English 2.0 audio offers a consistent, competent mix.

Although there's no scene-selection menu, the film can be remotely accessed via 12 chapters. Static menus include access to some enlightening special features:

Pacitto provides an interesting if self-congratulator commentary track that takes time to point out locations and praise the performances of his young cast. He's joined by his occasional assistant Peter Sherman (he didn't work on this particular film), who acts as unofficial moderator by asking some pertinent questions along the way.

10 minutes of auditions footage follows, shot on rough-looking video and shown alongside scenes that eventually featured in the film. They make for worthwhile comparisons.

There's an alternative version of the "Steak Hut" scene, where Nail is stabbed. It's almost identical to the final cut, apart from that it features an extra scene where we join Bobby on the toilet as he squeezes one out. We even get to see his blood-caked turd floating in the bowl. Too graphic and not in keeping with the rest of the film's tone, it's not hard to see why Pacitto never used this footage.

"Ever Shoot Someone?" is a 42-second deleted scene which is basically Tarantino-esque gangster dialogue spoken into the screen.

The disc opens with Bloody Earth trailers for KILLING SPREE, A FEAST OF FLESH and PSYCHO KICKBOXER, and is rounded off with a horde of trailers for Camp Motion Pictures attractions: CANNIBAL CAMPOUT, WOODCHIPPER MASSACRE, GHOUL SCHOOL, VIDEO VIOLENCE, BEAUTY QUEEN BUTCHER and SPLATTER BEACH.

Finally, Passion provides some decent liner notes on the cover's inner sleeve. These were actually originally posted by him on the Internet Movie Database in July 2004.

AMERICAN PUNKS has a heart and a brain, and offers more than the mindless violence or designer "doom generation" angst I was anticipating. Boasting a great lead performance from Passion and served well on Bloody Earth's R1 disc, it's worth catching sometime.

Review by Stuart Willis