Bully

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Horrorphile - June 2009

Bully

June 2nd 2009 05:39

Director Larry Clark started his cinematic career as a photographer focusing on the raw sensuality of young pretty wastrels and lost soul nubiles. It garnered him both artistic acclaim and notoriety. He took it to the next level and directed a feature, Kids (1995), made to look and feel like a documentary using mostly non-professional actors and capturing a disturbing urgency and apathy amongst NYC street kids. It featured the debut performances of Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson.

He followed up Kids with an even more controversial expose, Ken Park (1999), which was considered too offensive and too subversive for Australian audiences and was subsequently banned (one of only a handful of contemporary mainstream movies). Even after a concerted effort to have the ruling overturned by respected film critic Margaret Pomeranz, it still remains on the Australian censor’s black list. I haven’t seen the movie, but would like to. Apparently it features scenes of adolescent auto-eroticism that were deemed too dangerous for discerning adults.

Brad Renfro as Marty

This brings me to Clark’s third feature, Bully (2001), another portrait of disaffected youth, extreme apathy, and general teenage malaise, but this time murder is involved. Shot in 23 days it stars several up-and-coming Hollywood brats, one of whom is now dead (lead actor and associate producer Brad Renfro died of drug overdose in January 2008), and even features Larry Clark in a cameo.

Nick Stahl as Bobby

The movie is based on the non-fiction book Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge by Jim Schultze, with a screenplay co-written by Roger Pullis and David McKenna. Curiously McKenna, who penned the screenplays to American History X and Blow, used the pseudonym Zachary Long, after demanding his name be removed from the credits. Now why would he go and do a thing like that, probably because Bully turned out to be so dramatically inert. Larry Clark doesn’t seem to know what he’s actually trying to say. The movie rambles like a stoned, obnoxious wastrel. At least I’ll give Clark kudos for being able to make a movie that genuinely reflected the central themes.

Marty impresses the hell out of Lisa (Rachel Miner)

None of the characters in this movie are likable in the slightest. Actually, I lie, there is one brief role that impressed me (but I’m being contentious here); that of the gorgeous, buxom, strawberry blonde roller-blader who chats up Marty (Renfro) outside his work only to have “uber-charmer” Bobby (Nick Stahl, the eponymous bully), push her away by rudely reminding Marty he has a girlfriend. Fair enough. After checking the movie’s credits I discovered the girl was Jessica Sutta, one of the Pussycat Dolls, but this was while the outfit was still only a burlesque show and not the global phenomenon they are now. She had natural on-screen charisma, but it seems strutting with the other meow-meows was where her ambitions really lay.

Bijou Phillips as Ali and Kelli Garner as Heather

So Marty and Bobby have been “friends” since they were kids. Bobby treats Marty like shit. He puts him down, beats him, and yet tells him he loves him, that they’re best buddies. He’s a walking contradiction, and Marty has been beaten into submission, his self-esteem and the way he relates to people utterly eroded. Meanwhile Bobby is an inexplicable charmer. But that’s purely a dangerous veneer. He’s actually a sexually-confused misogynist. In fact there’s a strong streak of misanthropy running through this movie, perhaps director Clark’s intent was to show just how dysfunctional adolescence can get if it’s not properly parented. Oh yes, the parents aren’t shown in the most holy light either.

Michael Pitt as Donny

Marty starts dating impressionable Lisa (Racheal Miner), while her precocious friend Ali (Bijou Phillips) flirts with Bobby. Bobby is a cunt (pardon my French), and he rapes Ali. He also sexually violates Marty and Lisa’s relationship as well. Lisa initiates revenge. She “masterminds” killing Bobby with the aid of her cousin Derek (Daniel Franzese), her girlfriend Heather (Kelli Garner) and Heather’s volatile, hedonist boyfriend Donny (Michael Pitt), along with a wannabe gangster played by Leo Fitzpatrick (from Kids), the group of misfits string Bobby along for his last joyride.

Most of the acting is solid, with notable performances from Nick Stahl, Rachel Miner and Michael Pitt. Brad Renfro is too ineffectual an actor to illicit any real empathy with his morally twisted and psychologically abused character. Bijou Phillips is similarly self-conscious, while Kelli Garner shows talent, but her role is rendered thankless. However, as I mentioned earlier, none of the characters warrant any sympathy, they’re all so damn arrogant, pathetic, and obnoxious, spouting profanity like its going out of fashion, puking here, throwing verbal abuse there.

Bully Daniel Franzese, Kelli Garner, Bijou Phillips, Brad Renfro, Rachel Miner

Crime don't pay

Bully is a suburban nightmare for parents ("It's 4am, do you know where your kids are?"). There movie holds something intriguing, but it’s buried too deep. It’s a shame Larry Clark couldn’t infuse more of the urban melancholy that gave Kids its chutzpah. The movie he made next, Another Day in Paradise, a gritty crime-thriller, starring James Woods, Melanie Griffith and co-starring Natasha Gregson Wagner, is probably his best (since I haven’t seen Ken Park).

Here's the trailer (sorry, lo-rez is all I could find):

Bully DVD is courtesy of Siren Visual, many thanks!

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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