User Reviews

I did not expect much from this movie and was pleasantly surprised, and having been to Salt Lake City a few times, I was particularly amused. I was there in 1980, at the outset of the decade in which the movie takes place. That visit turned out to be the one and only time I set foot in a disco club. It is a good thing I didn't run into Stevo and Bob, the twin protagonists of "SLC Punk!" They would have kicked my butt because they hate mods, hippies and rednecks. Whether or not to pound on a disco-goer wouldn't even be a question. At one point, Bob asks a British punk band's lead singer why he would never come back to SLC. "Too bleeding violent," says the bruised singer. "Thank you!" says Bob.

Stevo and Bob are anarchists. Not philosophical anarchists like Kropotkin, Goodman and Goldman (Peter, Paul and Emma), but more like Leon Czolgosz, the guy who assassinated President William McKinley. Except Czolgosz had more direction in his life. Aside from throwing darts at pictures of President Ronald Reagan, Stevo and Bob just get drunk and high. Correction, only Stevo smokes grass while "Heroin" Bob is ironically nicknamed because he is afraid of needles and anything stronger than booze.

The story is picaresque in both senses of the term: it is about a couple of semi-likeable rogues, and it is less a story than a series of vignettes. I thought that each vignette more or less stood on its own, but there is something of an overarching theme, too. These young men grow up physically if not emotionally. Though angry and feeling not a little betrayed by society, they can't be Salt Lake City punks for the rest of their lives, or can they? The narrator, Stevo, is haunted by the fear that he or Bob or both of them might be the worst thing there is: a poser, a phony punk.

This movie also features one of my favorite under-rated actresses, Annabeth Gish, as Trish who runs a head shop. Bob sells himself to her for thirty-six dollars. As decadent as that might seem, there turns out to be something sweet about it, much to Stevo's disgust!

Like wearing a blue-green mohawk, "SLC Punk!" might not be for everyone, but I mainly enjoyed it. My favorite scene is the one in which Stevo's parents sit him down and try to get him to go to Harvard. What a scathing satire on my self-righteous and self-satisfied boomer generation!

Which, in this case is a good thing. I've seen the title before, found it vaguely interesting. However, without having heard anything about it, I wasn't going to chunk any money on it.

Then it came on cable, so I decided to give it a chance.

I've seen Matthew Lillard in about four movies, and so far he has been a single-note actor, always playing the ragingly obnoxious punk. Still, on that one-note he is amazingly convincing and impossible not to watch. Much like Jimmy Stewart or early Arnold Schwarzenegger, building fame on familiarity.

Christopher MacDonald gave the best performance I've seen him do as Steveo's dad. Very solid, sympathetic, and even likeable.

The movie itself mesmerized far more than I expected. I was transfixed from the beginning to end.

Acting and clothes were excellent, not a sour note in the entire lot. Plotting and scripting were very well developed. The movie kept me involved, interested, and ready to buy. Thank you for a great movie.

If you pick this up at the video store, you'll probably expect the wrong thing: kind of a goofy, teen-oriented, mock angst trip by a couple of overdone punks through Salt Lake City's holy land. That's not even close to the heart of this film, which is smarter and more vital than most.

Essentially a monologue by the main character, Steve or Steve-o, SLC Punk starts, ends, and runs with energy and insight, all without the ponderous pronouncements you'll find in most films focused on one character. The central character and his interesting entourage are not the caricatures you see on the box, they're the genuine, multi-dimensional people you went to school with if you were lucky.

The visuals are savvy and professional, opening up what could be a stage show to the wider world. A classic experimental 3-D pan shot done with over a hundred one-shot cameras would be hailed as groundbreaking, had this film not been released concurrently with The Matrix.

Film hounds will catch the theme and scene parallels with Easy Rider, particularly a drug trip much richer than the exaggerated freak out in that film.

Funny, smart, immediately engaging, dangerous, and often more textured and subtle than it appears at first glance, you will understand why SLC Punk (released by Sony Pictures Classics) has such a loyal following.

This is the film I wish Kevin Smith had made instead of Clerks. Yes, that's a compliment for Smith, who admits he has grown a lot as a filmmaker, and a mild slam on Clerks, which was what it was -- interesting characters wrapped in a poorly done film.

I saw this movie for the first time tonight and I must admit, I wasn't expecting much but it left me almost crying in the end, and recommending it to all of my family and friends. I don't claim to know what the 80s punk scene was like, especially in Utah, but regardless of whether punk life was portrayed correctly or not in this movie (I think most of you who bitch about that aspect wouldn't know anyway), it was written extremely well and the acting was just incredible.

This film is about anarchy and the whole 1980's punk rock scene with references to many early punk bands such as Sex Pistols and The Ramones. If you're expecting this to be another Matthew Lillard teen flick, you are greatly mistaken. Sure it has its funny parts, but mainly this film survives on great acting by Lillard and Michael Goorjian. Lillard and Goorjian's characters believe that they are the only "true" punk rockers in Salt Lake City, Utah and go about their lives liberating against conformity. Their characters, like every punk, need to be different and their main focus in life really is anarchy. Film would have suffered if not for the casting of Lillard and his narration throughout the film was another plus. I recommend seeing it because it is something far different than anything Matthew Lillard has ever done.

On initially watching this movie I wanted to give it a higher rating, because all in all it was fast-paced and entertaining. The dialog was good enough and there was plenty of humor and action. One stylistic criticism is that Stevo's voice-over was poorly utilized. In movies where the method works, such as Fight Club and A Clockwork Orange, the voice-over was used moderately so as to represent the narrator's perspective through comments where it would otherwise be unclear rather than summarize things that could have been shown instead of told or were already happening on screen. Overall, it seemed to be a low-budget attempt to emulate Trainspotting's style.

On further reflection, however, it's clear that this movie is geared towards 90's hipsters who don't know anything about punk rock and only recognize it for its fashionistas and punk bands that were slow and poppy enough to make it to the mainstream. Disappointingly, there seemed to be more classical music in its soundtrack than genuine 80's hardcore songs. Despite Stevo's railings against 'posers,' he and his friends seemed to be trying too hard with their image to take any of his 'anarchist' rhetoric seriously. Nor is anarchism even close to being the only ideology which identifies with punk. Contrary to this movie's attempt to portray punks as being to the 80's what hippies were to the 60's, the genre is far too diverse and divergent to make the point stick. Along with druggies there were straight edgers, along with anarchists there were fascists, and along with all of them there were people who just didn't care one way or the other. SLC Punk attempted to use broad generalizations to display a small subsection within punk rock as being wholly representative for its target audience of outsiders. Within 80's hardcore, a shaved head, plain tee, and boots were far more common than a blue mohawk with tight leather pants.

SLC Punk never truly felt as though it was about the music or even the broader social scene so much as it was about a specific character, his specific problems, and his specific viewpoint.

The amorphous plot had been satisfactory until its ending, which had conclusions which were too black-and-white and didn't translate smoothly enough from the protagonist to his broader social situation. This could have been forgiven however, if not for the display of some of the most horrible and clichéd acting I've seen within memory from the two kids playing the flashback versions of Stevo and Bob. The amateurishness and total lack of quality in this scene speaks for itself.

I would only recommend this movie to someone with nothing else to do and who can take its portrayal of punk with more than a grain of salt.

Anyone who has spent time in the American punk underground will find many points of reference in SLC Punk. The film is an amazingly realistic portrayal of the suburban punk subculture. All the issues are here: poseurs, sell outs, authenticity, straight edge, rebellion, boredom...and of course the perennial problem of whether mods and punks can get along! I can't recommend this gem strongly enough.

I thought SLC Punk! was an alright movie, but nothing terribly exciting. It has a somewhat interesting story and has some pretty good acting. There were a few times where the filming absolutely drove me insane (for instance near the beginning of the film, when Heroin-Bob is standing up and talking to Stevo while Stevo is laying on the ground looking up at him). The way it was filmed was just awful, there was way too many film cuts that shouldn't have been there. I can't figure out what kind of effect the director was trying to get there, but it just angered me. I don't think it's a good idea if you're paying more attention to the editing than the dialog that's being said. Anyhow, there wasn't a lot of this kind of filming, so it didn't bother me enough to ruin my movie-watching experience.

All in all, it was a pretty good movie. There was some good comedy in the film as well, and a lot of unexpected things. I definitely wouldn't say this film is for everyone, it is a very odd movie. I'm not even sure what kind of person would or wouldn't like this, so I don't know what to tell you if you haven't already seen this. I guess I'd say give it a chance and see what you think, but don't have too high of expectations.

Thanks for reading.

-Chris

It's unfortunate that more people have not seen this movie. Well at least people in the 15-28 age range, that is. If you have ANY interest in punk rock and the attitude that comes along with it, you have to see this movie. If you have ever wanted to just tell the world to F*** off, then this is a movie you should see. Granted, it's not for everyone, there are those who may not be able to look past the language and violence, but that's what being punk is all about. I was very impressed by Matthew Lillard in this movie, his performance in the ending of this movie shows just how good a dramatic actor he can be, too bad he's typecast in all those teen movies, not that he isn't great in them.

OK first the disclaimer:

Punk rock died the day it was blessed with its moniker, I think somewhere around 1979/1980. I think part of the reason it died was because everyone was trying to strictly define what Punk meant, kinda defeating the purpose. The idea of anyone claiming to be "punk" now or at any point during the 90s or even the 80s is patently ridiculous. It's death, however, did serve to allow many people in different places to cadge together their own ideas about what "punk" was and reshape their own local counter-culture scene into something somewhat resembling that. Let's face it, the entire idea behind Anarchy is that of Iconoclasm; the destruction of images and false constructs, for example pop culture trends such as PUNK.

End disclaimer.

I came in as part of the punk revival (2nd wave) in the mid-80s, growing up in a mid-sized Midwestern city. The punk scene was very alive there and I immediately identified with it, but stuck with the non-conformist nature of it rather than filing off into a splinter group and wearing a uniform. This movie recalled a lot of my own experiences, ideas and feelings from that time. Uncomfortably so. Of course there was a lot of BS too, but the BS was part and parcel of the scene since everyone was co-opting "punk" into their own little social circles.

I didn't learn anything from this movie, which to my mind illustrates its accuracy as a decent, digestible snapshot of what was going on within that world where each of us knew a Heroin Bob, a crazy Belgian Mark, an intense nerdy Mike who just might go off the deep end and start a fight with the cops, a slutty Sandie, and armchair philosophers galore. And of course drugs, booze, filth and bad music.

A previous reviewer scolded this film for not following the "true punk" philosophy and went on to talk about how the Midwest "doesn't have a punk scene." Wrong. Buddy, reading books or watching videos about the history of that movement won't tell you anything. It was not deep, profound, or incredibly thoughtful. Don't read too much into it.

I saw this movie after hearing very positive things about it and with generally good expectations. And those expectations would seem to be the same if I looked at the IMDb reviews.

However, soon enough into the movie I remembered that not all indie movies with quirky premises are works of genius. The whole film felt like the writer/director saw "Trainspotting" and took the wrong things from it.

One element in particular that gave this feeling is the use of narration. With movies like Goodfellas, Fight Club, City of God, and of course, Trainspotting among my favorites, I am certainly not opposed to movies told in the first person. But James Merendino seems to think narration is a valid substitute for characterization and plot development. Most of the narration says things about the characters and events that either would be more interesting shown in the film rather than simply told, or has already been shown in the film, and is thus being redundant. Very rarely does the narration actually do something to add to the story. I don't know about the other reviewers, but I found it pretty clear from the beginning that "being an anarchist in Salt Lake isn't easy", before Stevo told us several times, and by the time he tells us flat-out that Mike is "hardcore" despite his outwardly preppy appearance, Mike has already *well* established that in a certain fight scene.

I also felt the film squandered a lot of potential. In one of the first shots, where the camera zooms in on targets made from Reagan portraits, I became excited about a thought-provoking and unique critique on such an oppressively conservative atmosphere as Reagan-era America against the backdrop of already religious and conservative Salt Lake City. Instead, the characters' rants seem to go little beyond yelling the F-word and telling the audience what anarchy means(not what it means to them, just the dictionary definition of anarchy) for the umpteenth time. The closest the movie comes to an actually intelligent argument for punk/anarchy is Stevo's rant at his parents, and even then it rambles and becomes little more than saying things very eloquently. In fact, all the script ever seems to do to try to depict punks as anything beyond the stereotype is embellish their dialog with the same kind of faux-eloquence that Bill and Ted enjoyed using so much. I was disappointed how despite how much there is to argue against the system, especially in Reagan-era *anywhere*, no one really discusses why they choose anarchy or what's wrong with the government/system. Everyone seems to be content with a blind, almost dogmatic belief in anarchy.

This isn't to say that I completely hated the movie, however. There were certainly parts that I thought were funny and well-done. I loved the scenes with Sean, the character of Mark and the scene that highlighted him, and the trip to the liquor store, among other scenes. When the movie hit the mark in scenes like these, it was hilarious and original.

I thought it was overall decent film-making, as far as camera and editing technique goes. However, I thought it sometimes tried to pass style off as substance; a prime example being the overtly complicated digression about "The Fight", that despite using an interesting, if not inventive, montage of images and clips in conjunction with a mock-lecture from the narrator, ultimately says and means nothing, and is not only content with that, but fully aware of it.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with SLC Punk!. I thought there was decent film-making throughout and some good parts here and there, but this was ruined whenever the the narration came in or Stevo broke the fourth wall. The characters were rarely more than ideas or stereotypes, and never seemed to stand for anything more than "F**k the system", without figuring out or explaining why. Why this seems to be a must-see for punks everywhere is beyond me; if anything it simply dumbs them down and dissolves any real purpose behind being a punk, and is fully aware of this.

Matthew Lillard - what a surprise! I have always found him to be annoying, but in this film he was likeable and quite clever. "Stevo" is the blue-haired punk son of silly, over-hippified parents who went from mohawk to a more low-key look after graduation. He is obviously not stupid. He uses his audience-addressing monologues to amuse us and let us know exactly what's up, instead of merely whining at us or grinning and nudging us with his elbow. The kid is downright charming. And I appreciate the fact that he actually gets along with his parents, even while fighting against what they want. It's refreshing. I am in his age group (in the movie - 80's teenager) but I am not familiar with punk lifestyle, and now I feel like I have been exposed to something I've always found interesting, but never delved into before. Stevo goes through a bunch of changes and realizations, and by the end decides that you can "F--k stuff up more from within the system that outside it". And that being rebellious comes from inside, and not from your haircolor (even though blue hair is still cool). Great message, neat movie. Recommended.

Set in the early/mid 80's during the dawn of Punk Rock Music. Stev-o and Heroin Bob are your typical anarchist punks only problem is they live in Salt Lake City, Utah, a very religiously oppressive city where the locals look at punks as only devil worshippers. The film chronicles an entire day in the life of a punk, the realism is unmatched as the film is also guided by the narration of Stev-o who gives us a somewhat rational take on anarchist kids morals and intentions. Believe it or not Bob, Stev-o & Mike were College graduates that have loving families with successful careers. All had the urge to rebel against a system the only way the knew how, waste their college minds in order to keep this new found party going in hopes forever. Unfortunately all things comes to an end and in the case of sex, drugs, & rock and roll, it ends how it started, crashing and burning.

The punks we see in this film shows a take on liberating against conformity that was executed beautifully. The depiction of language, drug use, & violence though may not be for everyone but is the life blood of the Punk scene and was delivered on a silver platter. Matthew Lillard is fantastic in this film guided by his attitude and self righteous nature but shows glimpses of genuine humanity of a kid finding his place that comes to a head near the conclusion where he reaches a coming of age moment. A moment thats equally heartbreaking and liberating. Lillard takes us on a journey that we seemingly get lost in aided by his introspective monologues that really guide the film forward. The film really has a great message that most of us need to really look at the way we're living and if the crusade each of us is on is really worth the trouble.

This movie.reminded me of Crowe's Singles -a lot! Themed around perceived punk lifestyle in SLC.

I always enjoy coming of age stories and if that's something you like...check it out. Some good acting.

Out of all the films featuring anarchistic punk characters this one has to be my best, not only does it cherish the subculture but pays homage to the fact that 'punk' is more than just a uniform/dress-sense; it's a lifelong mindset that you shouldn't need to shed as you become an adult. The internal struggles of the main character were highly relatable, his journey for meaning and the core understanding of why he became a punk in the first place are timeless.

SLC Punk is a great comedy drama that provides not only laughs, but a lot of thought provoking emotions as well. It's definitely a film that stands out on its own, and takes you for a good ride through the eyes of its main character. The story centers around Stevo portrayed by Matthew Lillard and his best friend Bob portrayed by Michael Goorjian, two punks in Salt Lake City that have little to do with themselves and even smaller goals.

Although simple The story is very original, and the characters are absolutely captivating. The movie is filled with a lot of memorable music and dialogue, and the end will pull at the heart strings. If you have never seen this movie before, you won't be disappointed you watched it.

As a recovering Farmville addict, I can strongly empathize with the anti-establishmentarianistic and 12 step undertones of this modern rom-dram. Growing up as a punk rocker really drew me to this film. I was expecting some classic Boxcar Racer and Good Charlotte but instead got a hefty dose of crust punkorama under the guise of anti-Obama politico-societal revolt. Better luck next time, Disney.

Sure the film is marginally entertaining but if you were into punk rock music before seeing it and are familiar at all with the culture of punks in general, then you really will feel this movie is more like a stupid hipster version of punk culture than a good comedy/drama depicting it.

If you want a strong account of punk from the 80s, then watch a movie from the 80s like 'Suburbia.' This is more like a Mathew Lillard vehicle which allows him to make a bunch of smug remarks and observations. And where the movie could fly as a hilarious punk satire (because punks DO take themselves to seriously as this damn movie proves) instead becomes phony punk 101 for a bunch of 90s hipsters.

The only redeeming factors are a few funny moments and some good songs in the soundtrack. Like any outsider looking in, the subject is completely generalized. If you want to see a marginally entertaining movie that becomes overly sincere and melodramatic about halfway through, fine, see it. Otherwise just read 'Please Kill Me' or 'American Hardcore' or see the MULTITUDES of punk films. They are WAY better!