The teen risk genre has been around a long, long time (e.g.: OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS from 1928). HAVOC is comparable to the legendary James Dean’s iconic REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. The same theme is explored and exploited: teens — bored with middle class lives, self-absorbed parents, hypocritical adults, and their irrelevant education — take risks with sex, drugs, violence, music. When we look at REBEL today, we are struck by the tameness of the rebellion. The dress, hair, speech, attitudes of the characters all seem pretty ordinary to us. The sex is more implied than overt, and as befitting the then courant interpretation, is full of dated references to Oedipal issues, coming of age sexual tension and gender role confusion.
In REBEL, made in the mid-1950's, the white middle class kids try to act like contemporary “delinquents” with knife fights, and games of chicken with their hot rods, resulting in a death. They get into trouble with the law and their parents have to rescue them without understanding them. They get counseling from adults who don’t get them, and they ultimately find solace only in touching each other. Surviving these tumultuous years is not for sissies, as proven by Sal Mineo’s death.
HAVOC updates the story to Palisades High in suburban L.A. in 2005. Our heroine is Anne Hathaway, forcing a break from her Sandra Dee PRINCESS DIARIES persona, by joining a gang fight, getting stoned, baring her luscious breasts and giving a blow job in the first 15 minutes. She is one of a gang of white gangsta wannabes who look pretty silly in hip-hop sweats and gold chains, talking trash. Every girl is a “ho’” or “bitch.”
Following the REBEL template, Anne’s pal, played by Bijou Phillips, has gender issues — she’s in love with Anne, and of course, she is the one who will not survive, emotionally that is. She follows her self-loathing heart by agreeing to sex with three “real” Hispanic gangsters, only to break down and later cry rape. Anne must then do the right thing, the liberal thing by telling the truth to save the Hispanic gangster. The end is muddled, with Anne’s white bread gang trying to raid the East Los ‘hood with guns, managing only to terrorize women and babies, then encountering revenge seeking Vatos while driving by. The screen blacks out and we hear shots.
In a sense, this little straight-to-video B movie outdoes the overpraised and bloated CRASH in exposing the same theme, the apparently irreconcilable worlds our cities have become. The white kids want to "make it real." This film doesn't quite do that, but, like the drive-in teen movies of the 50's, it works better than the adults, who still don't "get it."
In REBEL, made in the mid-1950's, the white middle class kids try to act like contemporary “delinquents” with knife fights, and games of chicken with their hot rods, resulting in a death. They get into trouble with the law and their parents have to rescue them without understanding them. They get counseling from adults who don’t get them, and they ultimately find solace only in touching each other. Surviving these tumultuous years is not for sissies, as proven by Sal Mineo’s death.
HAVOC updates the story to Palisades High in suburban L.A. in 2005. Our heroine is Anne Hathaway, forcing a break from her Sandra Dee PRINCESS DIARIES persona, by joining a gang fight, getting stoned, baring her luscious breasts and giving a blow job in the first 15 minutes. She is one of a gang of white gangsta wannabes who look pretty silly in hip-hop sweats and gold chains, talking trash. Every girl is a “ho’” or “bitch.”
Following the REBEL template, Anne’s pal, played by Bijou Phillips, has gender issues — she’s in love with Anne, and of course, she is the one who will not survive, emotionally that is. She follows her self-loathing heart by agreeing to sex with three “real” Hispanic gangsters, only to break down and later cry rape. Anne must then do the right thing, the liberal thing by telling the truth to save the Hispanic gangster. The end is muddled, with Anne’s white bread gang trying to raid the East Los ‘hood with guns, managing only to terrorize women and babies, then encountering revenge seeking Vatos while driving by. The screen blacks out and we hear shots.
In a sense, this little straight-to-video B movie outdoes the overpraised and bloated CRASH in exposing the same theme, the apparently irreconcilable worlds our cities have become. The white kids want to "make it real." This film doesn't quite do that, but, like the drive-in teen movies of the 50's, it works better than the adults, who still don't "get it."
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