This silly and demeaning action picture reworked as a moron joke is an insult to so-called trailer trash everywhere. Fired for blowing the whistle on abuses at the Severin Nursing Home, financially strapped Linda Bronco (Sean Young) still envisions a better life for her college-bound son, Mike (Tony Denman). After
booting out her WWF-wannabe spouse, Linda hooks up with the sheriff’s son, Brian Ross (Jason London), who lacks his daddy's law-enforcement gene. Meanwhile, Mike and his bad-influence buddy, Lennie Lake (Jacob Tierney), pull a convenience store prank that backfires; Lennie aggravates the misdemeanor by rifling the cash register. Lennie turns to his grandfather, shyster Ron Lake (William Devane), to get them off; he does, but at high cost. Lake suggests that they get the money to pay his fee by ripping off the nursing home, and Linda, Brian, Lennie and Mike agree. But there's little honor among these amateur thieves after Lake's luscious young bride, Sandy (Jamie Pressly), starts making goo-goo eyes at Brian. Eager to ditch Lake, Sandy encourages Brian's criminal career, masterminding a heist at the Mr. Snack restaurant and then persuading Brian to
withhold most of the take from Linda’s gang. Unsure of Sandy's affections, Lake blackmails Lennie and Mike into killing Brian. Brian instead repeatedly shoots himself by accident in front of the reluctant hit men. Finally, the Sheriff's department begins to doubt Lake and his pattern of dissembling. Only Sandy knows the location of the $200,000 stolen from the Mr. Snack vault, and she's not about to fork it over to Ron or Linda; all she has to do is figure out how to pull the rug out from under Sandy and her son's law-abiding future will be set. As fledgling directors learning the ropes, Jonathan Demme (CAGED HEAT) and Martin Scorsese (BOX CAR BERTHA) both energized similar drive-in action-film fodder. But nouveau exploitation writer-director Mark Addis exhibits no cinematic flair and his film falls painfully flat. --Robert Pardi
