Being an anarchist in Utah has got to be one of the toughest jobs around... and it was no easier in 1985 at the height of Ronald Reagan’s influence over American social values. Salt Lake City is a centre for the straight-laced Mormon faith in the USA. In 1985, you were almost as likely to find a person of the liberal political persuasion working in the White House, as you were to find a punk rocker in SLC.
Stevo (Matthew Lillard) and Heroin Bob (Michael Goorjian) are two of those rare birds, roaming the streets of Salt Lake clad in army fatigues or garish leisure suit jackets, with blue and/or Mohawk styled hair. Their mission: to bring down the social structure of America by refusing to buy into it. Instead, they party, beat up rednecks and neo-Nazis, and slam-dance at punk concerts.
SLC Punk tells us the story of Stevo and Bob shortly after their completion of college. The film is almost as chaotic as Stevo and Bob’s lives, jumping from one vignette to the next in a sometimes-jarring way. Their antics are humorous – sometimes hilarious – and even conservative viewers will have a tough time disliking these guys. Sure, they’re rude and disrespectful, sometimes violent. But they’re really just lost souls trying to find their place in the world.
Stevo narrates the film, pointedly singling out the ‘posers’ for criticism. These are the people who dress like punk rockers and speak with fake English accents, but don’t really believe in the overthrow of capitalist society. As the film progresses, we slowly start to wonder whether the difference between posers and ‘real’ punk rockers is as clear as Stevo thinks. By the time this doubt is voiced by one of the film’s characters, the answer is obvious.
Goorjian does an excellent job as the neurotic Bob, skilfully playing a complicated and mixed-up young man. Lillard is surprisingly capable. While he doesn’t define his character as clearly as Goorjian does, that has as much to do with Stevo’s ambivalence about his lifestyle (despite his bravado) as it does with Lillard’s talents.
SLC Punk is a quirky compilation of events that gradually builds our affection for Stevo and Heroin Bob. Some of the vignettes fall flat, and it’s sometimes too disjointed and not as gritty as it should be. Despite these weaknesses, enough works to make this film a qualified success.
