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Tuff Turf
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This
odd, kinetic teen movie from director Fritz Kiersch is a lively mix-and-match
of contemporary genres.
It
features James Spader as a soulful, brooding hero, juvenile delinquent gangs,
rock video sequences, glimpses of punk subculture, and Robert Downey, Jr. for
comic relief.
Everything
in this film is in a strange, wandering, at times intoxicating state of
distraction: plot, style, characters and moral values. In retrospect (and even
at the time) it flags itself as a supreme ‘80s artefact.
Forget
all those once-groovy, endlessly academically canonised exemplars of
postmodernism in film, like Repo Man (1984): Tuff
Turf, in its own inadvertently switched-on way, is the real deal.
© Adrian Martin November 1992 |
