Blue City (1986) Paramount/Action-Drama RT: 83 minutes Rated R (language, violence, sexual content) Director: Michelle Manning Screenplay: Lukas Heller and Walter Hill Music: Ry Cooder Cinematographer: Steven Poster Release date: May 2, 1986 (US) Cast: Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, David Caruso, Paul Winfield, Scott Wilson, Anita Morris, Luis Contreras, Julie Carmen, Allan Graf, Hank Stone, Tommy Lister Jr., Rex Ryon, Willard E. Pugh. Box Office: $6.9M (US)
Rating: *
This is the movie I like to call “The Mystery of the Disappearing Basketball”. Here’s why. The main character played by Judd Nelson is carrying a basketball when he arrives by bus to his small Florida hometown. He has it when he goes into a bar and gets into a fight with an old high school nemesis. It’s returned to him after he’s released from jail the next day. He has it when he picks up his old motorcycle at a local garage. When he goes to visit his stepmother in the very next scene, it’s gone, no explanation given. We never see it again. This is the thing that bugged me the most about Blue City. I read somewhere that a scene explaining the ball’s disappearance was cut prior to release. In it, Judd visits his murdered father’s grave and leaves the ball as a vow to find his killer. This scene was not in the theatrical release or the subsequent video release. Now here’s where it gets really interesting. Somewhere between then and the DVD release in 2008, the scene was put back in. While it closes one of the movie’s plot holes, it doesn’t fix the rest of it. Blue City is still a stinker.
If you grew up in the 80s, then you remember the Brat Pack, a group of young actors made famous by hit movies like The Outsiders, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire. Efforts to transition said actors into more adult roles started circa 1986 with mixed results. Let’s talk about the failures.
Blue City falls under that category along with Out of Bounds (starring Anthony Michael Hall and Jenny Wright) and Wisdom (starring Emilio Estevez and Demi Moore). It stars St. Elmo castmates Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy. Nelson plays Billy Turner, a young man who returns home after a several-year absence only to learn that his father, the town mayor, was murdered almost a year earlier. He demands to know why the police haven’t caught the killer yet. When Chief Reynolds’ (Winfield, The Terminator) answers prove unsatisfactory, he decides to conduct an independent investigation. This, of course, is a euphemism for a campaign of harassment against the prime suspect, a shady businessman named Perry Kerch (Wilson, Malone) who takes care of his widowed stepmother Malvina’s (Morris, Ruthless People) affairs. What are the chances he’s also making whoopee with her?
Billy may not be the brightest bulb in the pack (okay, he’s a dope), but he knows enough not to do it on his own. He recruits his best friend Joey (Caruso, An Officer and a Gentleman), a fishing boat captain with a personal grudge against Perry. He also gets Joey’s younger sister Annie (Sheedy), a file clerk at the local police station, to help his cause. Naturally, romance blossoms between the two. Billy and Joey go on a crime spree, robbing the dog track and casino at gunpoint like a couple of cowboys. The plan, I guess, is to make Perry’s life miserable to the point where he fesses up to the murder (assuming he’s guilty, that is). I’m not sure I completely understand, but it’s okay. I don’t think Billy and Joey understand either.
Theoretically, Blue City should have worked. The source material, Ross Macdonald’s 1947 novel, is solid. Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 Hrs.) co-wrote the screenplay with Lukas Heller (The Flight of the Phoenix, The Dirty Dozen). Ry Cooder, a frequent Hill Collaborator, composed the score. So what went wrong? Where do I start? It’s directed by Michelle Manning, a first-timer who never made another movie after this one. Her inexperience shines through like the Florida sun. She makes one bad choice after another. The biggest is the casting of Nelson in the lead. As a tough guy, he’s most unconvincing. He somehow manages to be grating while still having the personality of dry wall. In one scene, the police chief repeatedly smacks his character in the back of the head. I’m sure I’m not the only one who wished they could do the same to Nelson. He has zero chemistry with Sheedy who plays her role with the passion of somebody filling out their yearly tax forms. Caruso is horrible as Billy’s low-life friend who may as well have “dead meat” tattooed on his forehead. As the bad guy, Wilson leaves little in the way of an impression.
Blue City is about as dumb as action movies come without Michael Bay being involved in some capacity. It’s a terrible attempt at what I call “teen noir”. I can’t believe how lame-brained this movie is. It wants us to believe that Billy can rob the most dangerous guy in Blue City and not end up dead within a day. He does it twice and still retains his ability to breathe. It also expects us to overlook an obvious suspect, a character who just wants to sweep all of Billy’s illegal activities under the rug. And if you want to know how much of an idiot Billy really is, look at the scene where he and his cohorts go to a rendezvous at a seedy motel with an exotic dancer (Carmen, Night of the Juggler) who claims to have valuable information. How does he NOT know it’s a set-up? Is he really that freaking stupid? Apparently he is.
Blue City is a bad movie, no question about it. At the time of its release, I labeled it “teen noir”. It’s definitely a film from the 80s with its Miami Vice vibe. Although set in Florida, it was actually shot in California. It has a flat, dreary look to it. Even at a scant 83 minutes, it feels too long. At the same time, it feels like huge chunks of plot are missing. I’ll give it this though. It’s better than most of today’s bad movies. For whatever reason, I find it fun to watch. It’s a guilty pleasure…. with or without the basketball.
