Review of SLC Punk!

This comes off as the American equivalent to Brit movies like Green Street Hooligans, Made in Britain, and This Is England, though far, far better (all those movies suck). A youthful exuberance, kinetic pacing, and occasional neat visual touches make up for the low budget and quality that reflects it. The photography is basic but the color palette (blue Mohawks, sometimes colorful walls, various clothing) is pleasant, with some nice landscape shots now and again (this is set in winter). The movie was made in '98. The story takes place in '85, but the movie is '90's as f#ck. It's one of those Gen-X titles that feels comfortably at home next to Clerks. It's a fun hangout movie that would make for a solid double-feature with Dazed and Confused (D&C is a high school movie and this is essentially the same thing post-college). We follow Mathew Lillard's caricature of a typical Punk as he hangs out with his Travis Bickle-looking sidekick, hops from party to party full of colorful characters, and navigates the various cliques around Salt Lake City (their mortal enemies the Rednecks and Skinheads, the Mods (think 'Quadrophenia'), Metalheads, etc.) People come and go, move away, die off, disappear, and in the end he finally succumbs to conformity, cleans up his hair, puts on a suit and tries to justify it all by telling himself he'll have a better chance "fighting the system from inside" - the kind of ending too many coming-of-age movies pan out to, that always brings me down. I never cared much for Mathew Lillard, but this is his best performance and for once he plays a likeable fleshed-out character with personality. The lack of structure or focus and episodic plot remind me of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting (I liked the movie adaptation far, far better than that novel, and Trainspotting is a far better movie than this one, but this movie, if anything, kind of came closer (intentionally or not) to capturing the feeling that book). It's a dime-a-dozen - yet another go-nowhere-in-a-dead-end-town teen nostalgia movie, but it's decent enough for what it is.