OUT OF BOUNDS (1986) * ½

Out of Bounds seems like an ‘80s Hollywood pitch meeting gone wrong.  It’s as if there were two execs in the room, one who wanted a John Hughes-style teenage movie and the other wanted a violent action flick in the vein of Walter Hill.  The final product plays like a compromise between both genres, but it’s neither fish nor fowl, making for a frustrating viewing experience.

Anthony Michael Hall stars as a green farm boy who is shipped off to live with his big brother in L.A.  While at the airport, he mistakenly grabs the wrong bag at the luggage carousel, which contains a million dollars’ worth of heroin.  If you’ve already asked yourself why a drug dealer would fly with that much heroin on him, you’re already too smart for this movie. 

Almost immediately, the drug dealer (Jeff Kober) tracks down the brother and mistakenly kills him and his wife.  He didn’t find Hall because he sleeps in a cottage in the backyard hidden behind a hedge that looks like it was made by Q in the James Bond films.  You see, the plot contrivances are getting to be too much already. 

Then, while being chased by the cops (who think he killed his own brother), Hall pulls a gun on a passing motorcyclist who gives him a ride.  Luckily for Hall, this guy is some sort of motorcycle stuntman as he is able to narrowly avoid objects at high speeds, crash through false fronts, and make giant leaps off conveniently placed ramps, leading to a big police car pile-up. 

If that’s too much to swallow, I won’t even tell you about how Hall is able to track down the girl he made small talk with on the plane.  Or how he’s able to blend in at a punk show with dyed black hair and leather jacket. 

From here, the movie devolves into one interchangeable shootout after the other.  Hall is cornered by Kober, and as he is about to shoot him, dumb luck intervenes and Hall escapes by the skin of his teeth.  Variations of this scenario are repeated ad nauseum until the whole thing becomes tedious.

The director was Richard Tuggle, whose only other directorial effort was the excellent Clint Eastwood thriller, Tightrope.  He also wrote Tightrope, which leads me to believe his heart really wasn’t in this one as the screenplay by Tony (Slipstream) Kayden is just too farfetched for its own good.  Maybe if Tuggle was working with a script of his own design (or one that didn’t completely hinge on the audience’s suspension of disbelief), it might’ve made for a tighter picture.  As it stands, Out of Bounds is bound to disappoint even the most die-hard of Anthony Michael Hall fans.