Stripping The Gears.
By Fred Leland

May 23, 2003

Nicholas Perry's (Director & Screenplay) Speedway Junky is yet another film about desperate people who live in that netherworld most of us would think of as Hell on Earth. Where the inhabitants live more like wolves and other predators than what we think of as human -where you can't be sure who your friends are or how you'll make it through one more day. Gus Van Sant is the Executive Producer, but Speedway Junky isn't as fun as My Own Private Idaho or as well done. Speedway is edgy and raw but often lacks credibility, so much that you may feel very cheated by the plot.

Jesse Bradford plays Johnny, a young kid from the Mid-West who wants to make it to South Carolina, where he hopes to be big in stock car racing. After arriving in Las Vegas, Johnny gets his money stolen while trying to improve his fortune at the slots. Now destitute, Johnny is forced to start begging at a nearby strip mall, where he is quickly befriended by Eric (Jordan Brower,) and his crew of street kids, drug dealers, car thieves, ravers, and other hustlers. The next day a local "John" picks Johnny up and takes him to breakfast. During the car ride to the "John's" home, he tells Johnny about how he thinks Johnny can pay him back for breakfast. Johnny freaks out and bails out of the car, leaving his duffle bag behind. With all his worldly possessions gone, Johnny finds Eric at a nearby bus stop.

Jordan Brower really stands out as the sweet streetwise Eric. He plays the young hustler with a sense of sophistication that he should be too young to have, and with a unique fear of growing older. Despite his fears and growing feelings for Johnny, Eric opens up his world while managing to give Johnny space enough to stop being such a rube.

Unfortunately it's Johnny's density that makes him seem like he just walked out of a Kids In The Hall sketch. Freaked out by Eric's pass, Johnny hits the streets and runs into a newlywed (Tiffany Amber Thiesen.) He goes back to her hotel room and gets thrown through a plate glass window when her Marine Corps. husband walks in. "Why sure little lady I'm new to your big town, but coming back to your room 5 minutes after I meet you seems perfectly safe."

Once Johnny is able to get around, he and Eric meet up with Steven, who gives Johnny advice on avoiding sting operations while scoring female tricks. Johnny follows Steven's advice and gets picked up by an attractive woman in a Jaguar. Oh but there's a catch, she's a hustler who thought Johnny was going to be her trick for the night. How embarrassing. Unable to score, Johnny goes back to Eric's apartment and gets in bed with him -on a strictly platonic basis I swear.

Eventually Eric and Johnny come to admit their feelings for each other in a scene that really won me over: because Bradford and Brower get the opportunity to just go for it and challenge each other to do some great emotionally charged acting. But unfortunately Director Perry, takes the story through an outrageous chain of events that's just lazy writing, and finishes off the movie in a convenient sappy way.

Speedway is interesting when it's exploring the seedy world of hustlers and street kids. It's even interesting when it's exploring what some will do just to survive, versus how they really define themselves. But the character of Johnny is too much of a stereotypical country bumpkin who thinks he's worldly, that the film is often funny when it's trying to be serious. Coupled with how the script just withers at the end with cheap gimmicks designed to reach an ending, Speedway Junky doesn't rise above an interesting time killer.

Fred presses on Speedway Junky

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