Such a frustrating disappointment

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This big time early eighties release has been all but forgotten until it started showing up on cable a few times recently.Sean Pean was still too young to be a political agitator, and he was desperate to shed his Jeff Spicoli image with this tough youth prison flick. He does a good job as O'Brien, who winds up behind bars after killing someone during his juvenile crime spree. He rises up the ranks of the prison hierarchy until Esai Morales, the brother of the boy he killed, winds up in the same jail looking for revenge. It's an old time prison movie right down to the wailing siren you hear during a daylight escape. In addition to Penn and Santoni, you'll also see a youthful Clancy Brown perfecting his on screen villainy as a brutal con.This movie was kind of a big deal in our area when it was filmed. I lived near where they shot most of it, and I remember the newspaper put out a casting call for local kids to try out for bit parts in the movie.

Bad Boys is an excellent,powerful and underrated Teen Crime Drama that combines terrific direction,amazing performances from Sean Penn and a wonderful cast,a fantastic score and a great script. All of those elements make Bad Boys a unforgettable film that cannot be missed.Set in Chicago,Illinois,Bad Boys tells the story of Mick O'Brian(Sean Penn),a teenage hoodlum who robs,steals and keeps getting into trouble. While doing an attempted robbery and driving a car Mick gets into a car accident killing a young boy. Because he is a minor,Mick is sent to the Rainford Juvenile Correctional Facility a reform school that has young and vicious criminals serving time. Now,Mick has to learn to survive at his new home at all costs.Released in 1983,Bad Boys is a brilliant and unforgettable film that was one of Sean Penn's early movie roles and is a movie that is truly underrated and very overlooked that while earning some pretty good reviews from critics was ignored by moviegoers at the time but over the years has found cult status over the years since it's release and it's well deserved. Right from the somber and emotional opening credits Bad Boys is an amazing movie from the moment you watch it mixing together genres such as the Teen film and Prison movie making Bad Boys one of the best examples of the Teen Crime Drama,a sub genre of Teen Movies that gives viewers a darker look at Teenage life because in this film the kids aren't thinking about going to a dance or going on dates but trying to survive on the mean streets of Chicago. During the early 1980s where Teens were trying survive in Slasher Movies and or trying to get laid in Sex Comedies,Bad Boys brought viewers back to the classic trouble youth movies of the 1950s such as Rebel Without A Cause and The Blackboard Jungle(both from 1955)and brought to the 1980s in a truly fantastic way that is brutal,harsh and bleak and done with a style that just punches you in the face from the opening scene. One of the things I love about Bad Boys is that inside and outside the detention center the teenage criminals exist in a world onto themselves where things such as violence,death and crime seems to be the only way out for them where it's all about survival and following the laws of the streets with no escape or hope. Bad Boys is a movie that is not easy to watch and that is one of the things I enjoy about it is that it doesn't hold back on it's grim and downbeat nature nor does it sugarcoat anything for the viewers. The Juvenile Prison scenes feel authentic and real almost like you are in there with the characters living a nightmare and you just want to get out of there. Inside the prison you will see that there is tension in the air all the time and anything can happen. The violence in Bad Boys is shocking and intense but is also fits with the dangerous world that the movie shows and the violence isn't pretty(lookout for the now famous pillow case scene). The screenplay by Richard Di Lello is just amazing and well written,with Di Lello's dialog being gritty and raw and giving the characters toughness. The main character Mick O'Brian isn't a likable person by any stretch of the imagination in fact when you see some of his actions you will think he gets what he deserves but at the same time O'Brien has some dimension and depth in certain scenes and in comparison to the other prisoners he's kind of likable even if you don't like him. Bad Boys has often been accused of being predictable at times by some critics and while there are some familiar elements that have been seen before in other films of this type that doesn't destroy the movie's impact. Some critics have also said that the movie is preachy but I think it works for this film in sending a message that is hard edged and memorable. The ending of Bad Boys is powerful and effective giving viewers a conclusion that answers questions while at the same time makes viewers asks questions with no easy answers. A great ending.The cast is great. Sean Penn is excellent and powerful as Mick O'Brien,with Penn bringing an intensity and emotional depth to the role. Rick Santoni is terrific as Herrera,a warden that cares about the kids. Esai Morales is wonderful as Paco,a rival of O'Brien's. Eric Gurry is fantastic as Horowitz,a friend and cell mate of O'Brien's. Ally Sheedy is great as J.C,Mick's girlfriend. Clancy Brown is amazing as Viking,a prison bully. Robert Lee Rush does a fine job as Tweety,Viking's partner and cell mate. Jim Moody(Mr. Daniels),John Zenda(Wagner),Tony Mockus(Warden Bendix),Dean Fortunato(Perretti),Lawerence Mah(Lee)and Eugene J. Anthony(Robert Walenski,J.C.'s Father)give good performances as well.The direction by Rick Rosenthal is sensational,with Rosenthal bringing a dark and atmospheric look to the movie and keeping the camera moving with tracking shots and a tight pace. Great direction,Rosenthal.The score by Bill Conti is haunting,intense and tragic matching the tone of the movie perfectly. Powerful score,Conti.In final word,if you love Sean Penn Teen Films or Prison Movies,I highly suggest you see Bad Boys,an excellent and powerful Teen Crime Drama that will stay with you after you watch it. Highly Recommended. 10/10.

Bad Boys is directed by Rick Rosenthal and written by Richard Di Lello. It stars Sean Penn, Esai Morales, Eric Gurry, Alan Ruck, Ally Sheedy and Clancy Brown. Music is by Bill Conti and cinematography by Bruce Surtees and Donald E. Thorin.Mick O'Brien (Penn), a teenage criminal from Chicago, finds himself doing hard time at the Rainford Juvenile Correction Facility after his latest robbery attempt ends in tragedy. Rainford is not a place where young thugs get reformed, it's where they become harder and more prepared for a life of crime........ Teenage hoodlum movies are notoriously difficult to get right, more often than not, in spite of being riveting viewing experiences, they come off as being exploitive rather than educationally observant. Over the years there have been one or two exceptions, leading the way was Scum (1979), Alan Clarke's scorching appraisal of the British Borstal system, and from America, Rick Rosenthal's Scum influenced Bad Boys starring a pre-fame Sean Penn. Bad Boys is a rare old beast in the pantheon of young offender movies, it manages to overcome inevitability and primitiveness of plot by giving thought to its central characters, notably Penn's wounded animal protagonist., who remarkably isn't a perfunctory part of the plot. Sense of place, too, is given much attention to detail as Rosenthal gets in tight within the confines of this juvenile facility. Di Lello's script is thankfully free of the clichés that often detract from the drama in a prison based movie, the moral choice heartbeat that pounds away in Bad Boys is never twee or shoehorned in by way of a necessity. The thematics exist on very real humanistic terms. Led by a spitfire turn from Penn, cast are mostly great, with Gurry (engaging), Sheedy (tender), Morales (complex) and Brown (menacing) adding a professionalism not often seen in films of this type.Problems arise when the film goes outside of Rainford's fences, for it loses some pent up momentum. What made Scum so searing and oppressive was that it never left the Borstal facility, claustrophobia and anger inherent were the order of the day. Bad Boys' makers choose to weld two concurrent stories on the outside, with that of Mick O'Brien's fate, it works in respect of the narrative outcome (which with some annoyance is never in any doubt), but at some cost to the mood created in the bleak interiors. There's also the issues of having to accept the ridiculousness of certain developments in the story. Be it the easy access to substances no real life prisoner would be allowed near, or the leap of faith needed to imagine that the prison authorities would allow the final confrontation to become a reality, we are asked to look the other way in order to get some hefty wallop into the drama.Violent and unflinching in its emotional honesty, and supremely crafted on both sides of the camera, Bad Boys, one or two hiccups aside, is a first rate drama. 8/10

Prior to starring in the hard-edged 1983 drama Bad Boys, Sean Penn had proved his early promise in the TV movie The Killing of Randy Webster, played a memorable supporting role in Taps (with fellow newcomer Tom Cruise), and created the definitive California surfer dude as the perpetually stoned Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. But it was Bad Boys that cemented Penn's reputation as a rare talent--an actor whose skill transcended his youth, revealing a depth and maturity that the majority of his acting peers could only aspire to. That gravity and emotional dimension is evident throughout Penn's performance here as Mick O'Brien, a chronic offender whose path to a Chicago juvenile corrections facility seems utterly preordained. The institution is hardly conducive to reformation--it's a jail for problem kids, and a cauldron for all the societal ills that sent kids there in the first place. Mick's there because he was involved in a shootout during a botched robbery of drugs from rival street gangster Paco Moreno (Esai Morales), whose little brother was killed when Mick accidentally ran him over with his getaway car. Overcrowding results in Mick and Paco's being sent to the same facility (one of the film's few stretches of credibility), and this leads to a rather predictable showdown that will take the jive prison's violence to its inevitable extreme. It's a shame this conclusion ultimately doesn't live up to the film's superior first hour, but Bad Boys remains a remarkably authentic, even touching portrait of troubled youth whose torment is conveyed through thoughtful and richly emotional development of characters. Director Rick Rosenthal (who had previously helmet Halloween II) maintains a vivid sense of setting within the correctional facility's cold walls, and through the performances of Penn and a superb supporting cast (including Ally Sheedy in her film debut as Mick's girlfriend), Bad Boys emerges as one of the best films of its kind, forcing the viewer to ask difficult questions about at-risk youth and the proper way to improve or at least preserve their endangered lives.