By Geno McGahee
In 1985, THE BREAKFAST CLUB was a big hit and both Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy were in high demand. The pair was reunited in the 1986 action/drama BLUE CITY and it didn’t do nearly the business THE BREAKFAST CLUB did and is basically a forgotten film at this point.
Billy Turner (Nelson) returns home to Blue City to discover that his father, the Mayor, was murdered. He is not happy and immediately visits his stepmother, Malvina (Anita Morris), and begins harassing her. One of the biggest problems in this film is that the person that you’re supposed to support is very unlikable, but there are plenty of issues with this flick to discuss beyond that.
After a visit to Chief Reynolds (Paul Winfield), Billy now has a top suspect in the murder of his father. It’s the new boyfriend of Malvina, Kerch (Scott Wilson), and he is running a lot of seedy shit in town. He has a casino and dog track and has a bunch of mean goons and dancing girls. He’s not a guy to be fucked with but Billy is going to do just that.
While in town, Billy reunites with old friends. He convinces his old best friend, Joey (David Caruso) to team up with him to take down Kerch and somehow convinces Annie (Ally Sheedy) to date him. It’s bad enough that Billy is fucking up his own life, he has to drag in these two people and risk their lives too. That’s some bullshit right there.
Joey and Billy go to the dog track and rob it and fuck up the races. Chief Reynolds ignores it because he was friends with the dead Mayor, but it still seems fucked that Kerch didn’t file a report and get Billy arrested. I can’t imagine Reynolds being able to cover for Billy with all the witnesses to the theft. They had guns. They shot the guns. They hit some poor nerd that was counting the money. Who’s speaking up for that nerd? He got the shaft.
The next big stop is the casino and this is where it really gets fucked. At least Dwayne Johnson had a good reason to smash up the joint in WALKING TALL. He was fucked over without question. Billy is just going on an assumption that his stepmother’s boyfriend knows or was involved in the death of his father.
The tables are turned over, the slot machines are destroyed and the goons are roughed up. On top of that, Billy is hitting random card dealers. What a total fucking asshole. These poor guys are just trying to get by and make a living and they get beat down. Once again, after destroying a casino, the law doesn’t get involved. They know about it. There were a shit ton of witnesses to the destruction and gunfire and they are still free men.
Kerch has had it with the bullshit and sets Billy and Joey up, sending his goons down to take them out. He’s not fucking around either. He’s sent Zeus (Tom Lister JR) and a guy in a leisure suit along with a couple other guys. If somebody sent Zeus after me and I saw a dude in a leisure suit with him, I’d be terrified.
Sadly, the dude in the leisure suit is killed. I hate to see that. I don’t think anyone in a leisure suit should die in it. Thankfully, Zeus got away and the cops finally get involved and arrest Billy and Joey and then immediately let them go. What the fuck is with this police force?
Shit hits the fan with Joey taken out and now Billy is out for blood and more people die for absolutely no reason. All this shit for one death and his dad was fucking old. I saw the picture of his father on the fireplace and he looked like he was 70 years old. In that high stress job he had, he couldn’t have had more than five years left anyway and now Billy has this hard on to kill everyone in town to avenge the death? What a crock of shit.
BLUE CITY could have been a really good movie. The writing was good and some of the cast was tremendous including Sheedy, Caruso and especially Winfield, but the star of the film, Nelson, sinks it. He has this fucking smirk on his face the entire movie that is just irritating and he does shit that is supposed to make him look cool, but it makes him look like an asshole.
Nelson is trying to channel his role in THE BREAKFAST CLUB here and maybe the director wanted that too, but the bad boy thing flops badly here and his performance isn’t good. He’s just so unlikable in this and the shots at humor fail badly and there is no way to root for him.
Despite suffering through Judd Nelson’s performance, this is a good film that could have been so much better had they had another actor in the lead role.