Eroe per amore

First time I watched Rescue Me was on TV in 1996. As a memorable quote from Marty(1955), I would say the same that Marty has said for his situation of searching for love: "I've been looking for a girl every Saturday afternoon of my life." I've never been in love, so been Fraser(Stephen Dorff).

Rescue Me is the type of movie when you watch at the age of 14, as I did, you will be totally inspired of the joy of being a teen. As a joyful road trip movie, ideologically Rescue Me seeks the meaning of life for a high-school kid. Willy nilly, Fraser seeks that meaning in school lessons, he couldn't find; he seeks that meaning in becoming popular among girls, he doesn't get satisfied; he seeks that meaning in finding love, he loses his self-belief. Finally he seeks that meaning in framing a career plan, and finds it; which must be the best thing ever happened to a teenager.

After seeing Rescue Me for the first time in 1996, I've taken a note on my notebook to get to myself finding a pretty girl and to make her love me. It was a full review of mine upon Rescue Me, that I've thought to tell as the very first starting speech to the girl I dreamed to find.

Rescue Me is the kind of movie, which you may enjoy on your own and it's for secondary or high school teens to get a good taste of it.

Two crooks, one half dumb, the other the full package, are interrupted during a shady deal and kidnap a feisty teen almost by accident. As her father owns a bank, she suggests they ransom rather than kill the living witness, so off they all go to the West Coast pursued by a lovesick teenager and the other half of the busted deal.

This starts out with the promise of teen romance but ends up as a buddy buddy/coming of age drama. No one is killed but it can't be said that everyone lives happily ever after, including you if you watch it until the end, but the half-decent soundtrack might just about get you through it.

That is, the half with Steven Dorff. The half with the crooks is badly discordant with the other. It's basically slapstick kidnapping and feels very uncomfortable when it veers close to rape-y.

I guess that sometimes works- Fargo basically had a similar structure. Doesn't work here though.

But the Dorff half is pretty good. It's a bit half baked. Seems like they could have just had Dorff be a photographer without the stalker angle.

Dorff *very* strongly evokes River Phoenix to me. Vaguely in appearance, but definitely in his mannerisms and voice. If I'm not looking at the screen, I keep thinking it is Phoenix talking.

It's all so strong, I wonder if they had the same acting training/coaches. Or perhaps since Dorff was three years younger than Phoenix, Dorff was patterning himself after Phoenix.

They should put a warning label on this one. Movies like this are puerile by concept but they can be fun provided everyone plays it right. This turd does not. It's not fun or funny and the action is worse than the worst episode of The A-Team. The characters are all annoying, played with a complete lack of skill by the cast. Michael Dudikoff's work in the American Ninja movies is like Brando compared to what he's doing here. Avoid this at all costs. Any movie that opens with close ups of Stephen Dorff's armpits should have all copies burned.

Michael Dudikoff stars as Mac, a Vietnam vet(Isn't Mikey Dudikoff too young to be a Vietnam vet?) who is blackmailed by a high school nerd(Dorff) to help track down the kidnapped girl of his dreams (Ami Dolenz) in this low budget effort. I remember actually seeing previews for this on late night TV, naturally this didn't do all that well in theaters. I think the problem is that Rescue Me often times feels like a sitcom rather than an action/comedy. There are some moments between Dudikoff and Dorff but mainly any depth is betrayed by the mindless antics here.

*1/2 out of 4-(Poor)