Homeboy Details

Oh Mickey what a pity...

Grief, Mickey, what happened? All that talent, but what good is it when it helps float dross like this? Come to think of it, Christopher Walken needs a good beating for appearing in this extremely poor excuse for a movie.

I got this out because I've always admired Rourke, was going through a regular hankering for his work, and wanted to reassess some films I'd partially forgotten. However, this is NOT the place to do it. Homeboy suffers dreadfully for being a product of its time, and Rourke is like a square peg in this wholely broken hell-hole of a movie.

To be fair, Homeboy isn't as bad as, say, Wild Orchid or some of the other shames Mickey committed in an attempt to salvage a paying career out of his heartbreaking act of professional suicide, however, it is pretty atrocious in the grand scheme of things.

Peddling battered Levi's and cowboy boots as a symbol of machismo is never a good way to open a movie, and things don't improve, as the director relies heavily on affected 80s lighting and moody rainy and thunder storms to make his point - with the latter underlining the pathetic in pathetic fallacy - and somehow manages to hit every trite cola advert cliche there is whilst missing genuine emotion, like a blind man shooting at close quarter barn doors.

In amongst all this Rourke's turn as an adled, over the hill boxer is arguably well intentioned, but he overloads his portrait with so many mental and physical ticks that what could have been a commendable performance in a decent movie, ends up so garish it actually challenges Olivier's Richard III in the melodrama stakes. And, even more hilarious, but for all the wrong reasons, is Walken's hustler, who is just as over the top, going bizarrely for a minstrel, pantomime Little Richard - all charged up on pimped, camp menace and peacock bragadoccio.

Unfortunately, whilst Rourke's sheer power, presence and effortless skill can save something like 9 1/2 Weeks, helping forgive its timecapsule stylings in favour of a chance to bathe in his undeniable cool, Homeboy is one battle he was never capable of winning. So much so that, like his boxer character in this fiction, Rourke ended up taking a beating he would struggle to get up from; ultimately coming off loser in a fight to save both his dignity and career under such hostile - albeit self-inflicted, if history is to be believed - conditions.

That he ghost wrote this under an alias is concerning, too, but is perhaps a good example of how important good direction is in saving projects. Had this been generated with greater quality control, it may, if the wind and gods had favoured, saved a pigs ear for a silk purse. Instead, what we end up with is meandering and mediocre pap caved in over genuine talent worth more.

A shame of epic proportions.