Hey gang, thanks for your patience as I got around to watching the film and writing this a little later than normal!

As usual, spoilers ahoy!

The film we’ll be discuss for our own perverse pleasure today is Red Surf, a 90’s action film starring a young George Clooney, Doug Savant and Deedee Pfeiffer*. It is ropey as hell. The film is pretty bad thought the fist three quarters, and then in the last 20 minutes or so nosedives into the territory of being bafflingly bad in ways that we will explore.

The film centres around Mark Remar (George Clooney), his girlfriend Rebecca (Deedee Pfeiffer) and their best mate Attilla (Doug Savant). Remar is the infomral leader of a group of ‘beach bums’/ street punks (henceforth to be called BumPunks) who both take and assist in the dealing of a lot of drugs. They fetch cocaine, dropped off in the ocean attached to a buoy, for gangster Calavera (Rick Najera). Exactly why Calvera’s own men can’t pick the drugs up themselves is unclear. Perhaps they use the BumPunks to lessen the liklihood of being caught with the drugs by police? Who knows. This improbably arrangement keeps the BumPunks in drugs and booze and they all seem to be having the time of their lives. However, Rebecca drops a bombshell on Remar when she tells him she is pregnant and wants to keep the baby. Remar promises to clean up his act and get out of the drug trade so that they can move away and raise the child in peace. The old ‘one more heist’ schtick kicks in and suddenly we’re on a predictable road to disaster. I say predictable, but I cannot in truth say I saw the last section of the film coming. Probably because it was completely batshit. But we’ll get to that.

By and large the film is bad, though not unwatchable. Some odd production/ design choices detract from it, but the central performances are decent enough and Gene freakin’ Simmons (lead singer of KISS and attempted copyrighter of the devil-horns hand gesture that he did not invent! https://loudwire.com/kiss-gene-simmons-regret-nothing-horns-trademark/) plays a fairly major supporting role for some reason! So that’s fun. The film is also a fascinating time capsule to early the nineties, and enjoyable on this level. Remar wears a Guns ‘n’ Roses tee, people still have big hair left over from the eighties, people unironically wear bandannas.** I’m also fairly certain it is the only time I’ve ever heard a character react to being told of a pregnancy by saying: ‘That’s bitchin!’

However, though I at least can find entertainment in that magical time period- old enough to be uncool, but not old enough to be ironically rediscovered or branded as retro- there are some major problems which prevent one from liking this film too much. The first of these is the production/ design flaws I mentioned earlier. This film either suffered from too tighter budget or too tighter deadline because there are some glaring, fixable flaws in it. The opening credits roll over a practically static, boring shot of water, the volume level of the characters voices plummets during a scene that should be dramatic, and the jetski chase is backed by a sort of low-tempo electronica that would be better suited to a guided meditation recording. Between that and the fact the chase scene is poorly shot and dark enough to be hard to see properly, one of the most climactic scenes of the film is rendered decidedly dull. HOW DO YOU MAKE A DRUG-FUELED JETSKI CHASE DULL. Finally, the cut in the final scene of the film where Pfeiffer and Savant are replaced by their stunt doubles is probably the most obvious I’ve ever scene. This all results in a decided lack of quality.

The second problem I would identify with Red Surf is in its tone. Between the occasional quite serious violence and the genuinely surprising amount of swearing, the film clearly WANTS to be a kind of Scarface-style hard crime/ gangster film. But the total lack of tension or emotional engagement with the characters or plot render the film pretty toothless through most of its runtime. It almost feels like watching someone pull out an Uzi in the middle of an Eastenders episode; it makes a kind of sense, but still feels like a jarring gear shift.*** Especially as the film, so clearly running down the path of ‘failed final heist’ suddenly contorts itself into finding a (sort of) happy ending- and its to this series of ending events that we now turn.

Red Surf might have scraped a two star rating from me. Its not great, and it lacks the goofy almost-charm of Hard Rain, but its not as actively punishing to watch as Dark Crimes. However, I more or less gave up on this film by the end. After the previously mentioned Jetski chase-I’m only five films in and already have watched two films with Jetski chases, what the hell- the main character Remar is found dead. Despite the general disappointment of the wonky chase scene, the film seems to be landing a fairly emotional crime-doesn’t-pay finish. And then, at what I can only assume was at the behest of a coked-up studio exec, the film CONTINUES for another twenty minutes without its main character! Gene Simmons leads the BumPunks is an insanely suicidal yet somehow entirely unexciting raid on Calvera’s home, everyone except Simmons and Attilla dies, and then the late Remar’s pregnant girlfriend and Attilla decide to run away together- with the film ending on a shot of them/ their stunt doubles riding off into the sunset smiling. The person who you value most in life, who you, Attilla, have literally described in this film as ‘family’, and who you, Rebecca, claimed to love was just brutally exploded. The wages of sin have come crashing down around you. Gene Simmons has run off to Mexico to build a houseboat****. On what planet are you on!!!

So all in all, I would not recommend Red Surf. It is amusing to see Gorgeous Georgie playing a drug-dealing ex-surfer who crashes peoples cars for fun, and if you want a crash course in why we should all pretend the 90’s did not happen, this film is perfect. If you want a coherent plot, compelling characters or just some cheap gangster thrills, you need to look elsewhere.

1 star: *

-Tom

*How many Pfeiffer’s are there anyway? According to IMDB, Michelle is the eldest, Deedee is in the middle and Lori is the younger sister.

**I should totally buy a bandanna.

***I heard Bianca is coming back to Walford though so anything could happen!……. (Any readers who actually watch Eastenders, please let me know if this joke works.)

****This is not a joke.

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