cult film freak: SEAN PENN WITH ESAI MORALES IN RICK ROSENTHAL'S 'BAD BOYS'

Sean Penn from the soundtrack cover of Rick Rosenthal's BAD BOYS Year: 1983 Rating: *****

In 1983, between playing a poignantly-logical, well-read military academy student in TAPS; a fan-favorite, classic-quote-spouting stoner in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH; and a rambling, high-strung, coke-dealing spy in THE FALCON AND THE SNOWMAN, director Rick Rothenthal provided Sean Penn his greatest, most authentic performance in BAD BOYS where ironically, driven by an intensely defiant glare, he hardly speaks at all...

As the first act takes place in the crime-ridden night-streets involving a Spanish vs black gang's big-money drug-deal as O'Brien and naive pal Alan Ruck attempt snaking the spoils, leading to the death of the little brother of Esai Morales's Paco Moreno, who intensely bookends the movie's revenge-driven main antagonist spot and yet, during the primary lockup scenes in a severe youth reformatory straight from the previous decade's gritty and uncompromising, steadicam-gliding, rock/funk-blasting exploitation era, it's Clancy Brown and Robert Lee Rush as violent/raping versions of high school bullies that terrorized 1980's cinema...

Sean Penn, Reni Santoni and Robert Lee Rush in BAD BOYS

Curbed by Penn's sidekick in Eric Gurry's brainy and resilient scene-stealer Horowitz and featuring inspired adult performances by Reni Santoni and Jim Moody as jailers equally tough as the kids while Ally Sheedy, downplaying Penn's dreaming-of-a-better-life girlfriend, steers perfectly clear of cliche romantic-melodrama...

Resulting in what's more a genuine prison flick involving teenagers than an expose about troubled-teens, highlighted by two pivotal sequences: the first as O'Brien uses soda cans inside a pillowcase to take out his rivals, and the last in an anticipated fight with Morales — overall making BAD BOYS a unique hybrid of brutal-action and well-timed suspense.