Leather Jackets

Stars: Bridget Fonda (Single White Female, Doc Hollywood, Scandal), D.B. Sweeney (The Cutting Edge, Memphis Belle, Eight Men Out), Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride, Glory, Days of Thunder, Hot Shots). There's much ado about nothing in this ballyhooed "world home video premiere" that would have surely laid a critical and commercial egg had it been released theatrically. Set in present day northern California, the film stars Cary Elwes as Danny Dobbs, a modern rebel without a cause who robs a group of Vietnamese mob members and ends up on the run. Dobbs meets up with his friend Mickey (Sweeney) who's leaving for a new job in L.A., and taking his newly engaged honey Claudia (Fonda) with him. After a brief stop at a private "stag party" for the departing Mickey, the trio hook up with Big Steve (Christopher Penn in a one-note strut performance), pile in the car, force Claudia to recall her vivid sexual past, and hole up in a motel room, where the Vietnamese mob eventually finds them. In addition to working in a number of references to the Vietnamese characters as "slopes" and "gooks," this mean-spirited piece of tripe is very violent and quite pointless. Although Leather Jackets looks sharp and certainly has star power, it generates more interest with its occasional secondary characters--Jon Polito, for instance, as greedy bar owner Fat Jack outshines the principals in a mere few minutes of screen time. Stylishly made, but it takes 90 minutes to go from nowhere to nowhere. Audience: Older teens looking for shocks perhaps. But there's so little character development here that teens won't find much to identify with.