SLC Punk!

Lillard cuts a fine figure as 18-year-old punk rawker Stevo, a blue-haired, self-proclaimed anarchist trapped, for the moment, in the decidedly un-punk locale of Salt Lake City (hence SLC) circa 1985. What works here -- to a point -- is Merendino's snazzy, balls-to-the-wall direction, a stuttering mélange of wild angles, slo-mo, LSD-inspired dream sequences, spotty in-camera edits, and scene after scene of our boy Stevo kickin' down that inimitable fourth wall with enough smarmy, cynical attitude to make David Spade look like Martha Stewart. Lillard is the focus here, but Goorjian, as Stevo's best bud “Heroin” Bob, is the breakout scenemaker, casting his hormonally challenged nail-biter as a fully rounded (albeit mildly defective) human, and making the one-two sucker punch at the film's end that much more powerful. Merendino's film is lacking the streamlined cohesion it needs to spike itself in your cortex as hoped, but it is about as accurate a punk film as I've seen in some time, especially when it comes to the horrors and boredoms of small-scene life.