Bad Boys

Bad Boys and The Falcon And The Snowman are the first film that Sean Penn was taken seriously as an actor and not just a James Dean wannabe. A lot of people with that rebel persona have come and gone, but Penn's proved to have staying power in his adult roles.

But it was a part like Mick O'Brien, kid from the mean streets of Chicago that first attracted the movie going public to Sean Penn. Bad Boys is not your usual teen dream Brat Pack film. Penn's representative of some of the baddest of the bad from the Eighties.

Penn's a high school kid from Chicago, but the kind who only goes to school on occasion, maybe to get messages from his hoodlum friends. A heist he plans goes horribly wrong and the little brother of another tough kid, Esai Morales, is accidentally killed simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That last crime finally puts him in reform school and of course Morales winds up there as well. That's after raping Ally Sheedy who is Penn's girl friend. That sets up the final confrontation between them.

Bad Boys is one of a long line of films going back to Wild Boys Of The Road dealing with the juvenile delinquent problem and the incarceration thereof. It's interesting how rape is used as a weapon in two instances here and how it's thought of that way. Morales rapes Sheedy as a way of getting back at Penn and in the reformatory the two who run the cell block where Penn and later Morales is put, Robert Lee Rush and Clancy Brown, use it as a way of establishing their authority.

Brown who will tell you this is a method of enforcement belies his own gay nature with those muscle pictures in his cell. And O'Brien's cellmate, Eric Gurry is also a latent case, maybe more. His performance in many ways is the most interesting in the film. He's a nerdy kid who happens to be one unusual inmate for the place. He's been picked on and in retaliation bombed a bowling alley where his tormentors were hanging out. Not too many kids his age have the scientific knowledge to pull off that and what we see him do here.

Still the film builds up to the climax between Penn and Morales and Bad Boys does not disappoint in the end. Bad Boys might have some charter Brat Pack members in the cast, but John Hughes wouldn't be doing a project like this.

This film has to be one of the best youth crime dramas around. Sean Penn delivers a strong performance as a troubled youth, without the will but the courage to change his ways. Ally Sheedy also delivers a strong performance as the sole light in Penn's insane lifestyle. Esai Morales delivers a strong performance as a youth who has takes the wrong roads in life. Buckle up, and get ready for an emotional ride by some talented actors/writers/director in this movie.

This is probably one of the grittiest teen flicks to ever come out. This film puts all the films in the Dead End kids to shame. Sean Penn is perfect as Mick and Esai Morales is great as Paco. Also, this film as well as the similarly themed Born Innocent pulls no punches as it shows how the juvenile justice system which is supposed to rehabilitate young offenders does just the opposite and makes them even more hardened. This truly is one of the best films of the 1980's.

Prior to starring in the hard-edged 1983 drama Bad Boys, Sean Penn had proved his early promise in the TV movie The Killing of Randy Webster, played a memorable supporting role in Taps (with fellow newcomer Tom Cruise), and created the definitive California surfer dude as the perpetually stoned Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. But it was Bad Boys that cemented Penn's reputation as a rare talent--an actor whose skill transcended his youth, revealing a depth and maturity that the majority of his acting peers could only aspire to. That gravity and emotional dimension is evident throughout Penn's performance here as Mick O'Brien, a chronic offender whose path to a Chicago juvenile corrections facility seems utterly preordained. The institution is hardly conducive to reformation--it's a jail for problem kids, and a cauldron for all the societal ills that sent kids there in the first place. Mick's there because he was involved in a shootout during a botched robbery of drugs from rival street gangster Paco Moreno (Esai Morales), whose little brother was killed when Mick accidentally ran him over with his getaway car. Overcrowding results in Mick and Paco's being sent to the same facility (one of the film's few stretches of credibility), and this leads to a rather predictable showdown that will take the jive prison's violence to its inevitable extreme. It's a shame this conclusion ultimately doesn't live up to the film's superior first hour, but Bad Boys remains a remarkably authentic, even touching portrait of troubled youth whose torment is conveyed through thoughtful and richly emotional development of characters. Director Rick Rosenthal (who had previously helmet Halloween II) maintains a vivid sense of setting within the correctional facility's cold walls, and through the performances of Penn and a superb supporting cast (including Ally Sheedy in her film debut as Mick's girlfriend), Bad Boys emerges as one of the best films of its kind, forcing the viewer to ask difficult questions about at-risk youth and the proper way to improve or at least preserve their endangered lives.

I recently saw this movie again (on video, not the uncut DVD). I hadn't seen it in about twenty years, but it affected me the same at 35 as it did when I saw it on cable at 14. It is one of the grittiest, rawest movies I have ever seen, and it works on a visceral level. The performances of Sean Penn and Esai Morales in this film go to show why they have both continued to be two of the hardest working actors in Hollywood. After seeing Penn as Jeff Spiccolli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," I was amazed by his range in this film (although he was excellent in "Racing With the Moon," which if memory serves me right also came out around this time). Morales took what could have been a one-note role and turned it into a caricature of a revenge-bent punk, but his talent even back then was clear that he was up to the challenge of putting emotion into the role and bringing some sympathy to Paco's plight. Clancy Brown and Ally Sheedy were excellent in their roles as well.

The movie worked not just because the acting was great, but because the story moved along at an exciting pace. It was suspenseful and was not overly cliché or pat. Overall, it was an unforgettable movie experience, a strong cautionary tale that still makes people think.