What did you watch? The 1989 Christian Slater vehicle, Gleaming The Cube.

What vehicle did he use? A skateboard.

Okay, bear with me: I went to the movies in 1989 and there was a preview for a movie about skateboarding. And skateboarding was something the cool kids did, the edgy ones, and I certainly wasn’t either of those in any way. So I probably was too intimidated by to see this movie where a teen undergoes a transition of sorts from delinquent skateboarder to in-over-his-head crime solver. Like, if I showed up to the theater, would there be skateboarders there? “HEY, it’s that NERD! Don’t let him see the movie!” and then I’d get pummeled by skateboards.

It’s like when Batman was released the same year – all the cool people had bat logos. I went and saw it alone and hoped no one would recognize me and ask me to leave. I may have some kind of social anxiety problem as a result of all this.

Hey, you were talking about a movie? And not your social awkwardness that got you a lot of deserved pummeling? Christian Slater is Brian, an Orange County middle class teen who gets in a lot of trouble with his friends skateboarding everywhere, including an empty pool where one of his buddies gets injured and the police have to come by as the teens get written up for trespassing or whatever. There’s not a lot of solid consequences we see from this other than Brian getting chewed out by his parents, including why he can’t be like his adopted brother Vinh. Brian and Vinh share a room and the room is divided evenly, the future professional in what looks like a generic college dorm room on one half, the other a messy punk rock palace complete with various band posters and garbage everywhere. They also play chess together, with a game that must go on for days.

Vinh has a job of some sort where he’s a shipping clerk, and discovers a discrepancy in the weights for medical supplies. He sneaks into the warehouse and is stopped by the owner, Lawndale, and Lawndale and Vinh’s boss Colonel Trac take Vinh to a hotel to beat out some kind of confession of what he discovered, but they accidentally kill Vinh. So they make it look like Vinh hung himself.

The family is devastated, including Brian, who shows up to the funeral, skating from a distance to Vinh’s coffin where he leaves a king from their chess set. It’s quite a visual, it’s certainly dramatic, but I think his parents would have insisted Brian drive with them and not make such a scene at the funeral.

Brian finds a sheet of paper in Vinh’s side of the room, but can’t read Vietnamese, so after going around to seedy places to see if he can get an Asian person to translate it for him, he’s chased by one of the guys who helped kill Vinh. He turns the table on this henchman by using his skateboarding skills to dodge and weave his way from being chased to eventually spying on the guy before sneaking in the backseat to see where he goes. The henchman drives to a country road where he meets Lawndale and Trac, and they argue and kill the henchman, which Brian observes through the side mirror.

Okay, I have to give it up for this movie on this level, and though I HAVE QUESTIONS, one is “what murder mystery are they trying to imitate here?” Because they’re kind of pulling off some intrigue as Brian continues to investigate, albeit getting stopped by officer Lucero who is forced to investigate Vinh’s supposed suicide since Brian was asking reasonable questions like “who rented that hotel room?” So Brian takes the next step, asking out Tina, Vinh’s girlfriend and also Trac’s daughter. She’s a normal teen, and Brian’s skateboarder RIP or Thrasher Magazine lifestyle is too extreme, so cue the montage of Brian tearing down his posters and then wearing normal clothes, and everyone (his skateboarding group, mainly) freaking out. It’s enough to win over Tina, though now she will never know the cool iconography of the DRI logo over his bed.

Wow, sound like they snuck in a decent murder mystery for a dumb teen adventure flick. Certainly it maintains this tone and we witness Brian use his street smarts along with his newfound prep charm to solve the mystery. It can’t go off the rails at this point, right? (sigh)

Brian has already snuck in the same warehouse to find out that the packages with the wrong weight aren’t medical supplies, but GUNS, and it seems that Trac and Lawndale are using their anti-communist medical charity to funnel guns to…the South Vietnamese, I guess? Brian breaks into the warehouse a 2nd time, securing the guards in a trailer before setting up an explosion outside, and leaving Trac’s hat at the scene of the crime for Lawndale to find. More henchmen are dispatched, first to go after Brian, who again uses his skateboard skills to evade the baddies riding motorcycles before launching himself over a police car, causing the motorcycle bad guys to get caught by the cops and questioned. Lawndale then confronts Trac at Trac’s home, pulling a gun on Tina and holding her hostage in front of her Dad.

At this point, I might be getting the exact details fuzzy here because of how the stakes are raised and handled for this adventure film clearly aimed at kids, Brian had already recruited his skateboard hoard to build a bad ass steel skateboard for him and also be on hand for shenanigans. And so he skates down to Trac’s home where the cops are on their way because one of the cops speaks Vietnamese and hears the motorcycle goons name Lawndale as the man who sent them. And this is the scene in my head from the production of the film:

Screenwriter: …and then Brian skates down to Trac’s home where he flies through Trac’s window in front of Lawndale, Tina, and Trac.

Producer: Wow! What a visual! and that’s how he takes down Lawndale, rescuing Tina?

Screenwriter: No.

Brian VERY CLUMSILY lands on his side and, I don’t know if it’s the distraction, but Lawndale SHOOTS Trac in the chest. Lawndale grabs Tina as Trac’s wife comes in the room and starts screaming for someone to help her husband.

Brian then leaves after Lawndale and Tina, on his skateboard, and though Lawndale is in a car, Brian’s skateboard pals show up blocking the road and causing all kinds of chaos before Lawndale pulls onto a highway and gets in a serious accident. Brian does another jump on his skateboard, knocking the gun out of Lawndale’s hand before landing hard on the highway concrete, injuring himself.

Later, Tina is visiting Brian in the hospital, and he’s trying to hold her hand, like he injured it along with a few other things, and you can bet there’s some parent telling their kid they were forced to drag to the theater to see this, “SEE? That’s what skateboarding gets ya! a trip to the ER!”

Was it good? Jesus h criminy, no.

Was it interesting? I got suckered in for almost a moment. In that moment I wondered if some Hollywood dummies were like “hey, let’s grab murder mystery plot H and we’ll apply it to something that the kids are into, like sock hops.” and then sometime after production hell, the sock hop was changed to skateboarding, I don’t know. But then I remembered, as Christian Slater is setting up various MacGyver traps before blowing up a propane tank, “oh, yeah, there’s a lot of cocaine in Hollywood board rooms.”

I think Trac’s accidental murder was not just the wrong way to raise the stakes, but a questionable choice of Brian bursting in through the window like that only to fall on his side and not actually do anything to help. He makes it worse, and then he’s telling a cop in the next scene that his skateboard group have free reign to chase down the killer. I’m embarrassed for everyone. The whole movie is pretty stupid, but it had a few going for it: Brian’s multicultural family via his adopted brother, their bond, him trying to investigate and getting deeper into trouble as he pieces things together. And then it turns a corner into a just plain 80’s teen adventure where they use a trend to stop the bad guy. And the kid breaks a lot of laws like setting up the fire (and leaving the hat? like this is a chess match that Brian has planned these moves, expecting a move from Lawndale? because of chess, from earlier?) And then it’s just a dumb brainless 80’s movie.

Wow, you typed a lot about this movie that you hope no one wastes their time on. Anything about the cast? There’s a lot of skateboard people, including Tony Hawk, but ALSO one of the skateboarders is played by Christian Jacobs, aka MC Bat Commander from The Aquabats and creator of Yo Gabba Gabba. Honestly, 99% of the movie was to see if I could spot him, and he had lines but frankly most of the skateboard team have no personalities of their own aside from waiting for Brian to tell them what to do, and it’s a YOUNG MC Bat Commander, before he was old enough…to draw a mustache on his face. Officer Lucero is played by a young and skinny Steven Bauer, who is Don Eladio from Breaking Bad. Christian Slater appeared in Heathers the year before – I wonder when this was actually filmed, because he looks younger here.