Born To Run (1993)

Recurring images of flaming car wrecks and fires burning in oil drums give Born To Run a postapocalyptic, Blade Runner-like feeling, but this hunking, clunking piece of manufactured teen autoerotica is set somewhere in the disembodied present in disembodied Brooklyn. Richard Grieco (21 Jump Street) plays Nicky Donatello, a local kid with the smirk of idealism annoyingly plastered on his mug, and Nicky's meaningful life's talent is as a drag racer, competing with integrity in matches manipulated by Joe Cortese as Phil, the ubiquitous local crime boss. Nicky has the full stereotypical complement: a dead mom, a broken-down shopkeeper dad, an older brother who was born to screw up, and a bad-for-business romance going with Shelli Lether as Sally, the mean mobster's sweet and improbably downtown-chic girlfriend. You can see trouble lumbering down this made-for-TV road like a dented Impala with muffler problems. ''Sometimes unlucky things happen to people,'' says the mobster. ''We're talkin' about survival here,'' says the screw-up brother. ''I wanted to be a winner. And that's what my car meant to me,'' says Nicky to Sally in his Hamlet soliloquy before the good-versus-evil showdown, by which time all this derivative drama needs is the theme music from Rocky and a dance scene from Saturday Night Fever to complete the list of influences that don't help Born to Run get up to speed one bit.

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