There was a time when Charlie Sheen wasn’t a punchline.
I’m not saying he was necessarily taken seriously as an actor, per se, but there was a time when the very casting of him in a film wasn’t part of the gag.
Sheen’s rather public troubles have made it virtually impossible for him to play anything other than a variation on his public persona. Which is a shame, because he wasn’t half bad as a performer. He lacks his father’s gravitas and his brother’s puppy-like charm and enthusiasm, but he always brought a certain edge and (underappreciated) comic timing to his work.
Say what you will about the guy, even at his worst, he was never bland.
And in the effort of reminding myself of that previous time, I watched his 1994 action/drama Beyond The Law, and found it far more interesting than one might expect a biker movie starring Charlie Sheen and Michael Madsen to be.
Sheen plays Dan Saxon, an undercover cop on the edge. He’s on the edge for two reasons: One, because he was beaten by his father as a child; and two, because that’s just how cops were in the nineties. Luckily, this abuse has resulted in Saxon developing the super human power of poor judgment, which turns out be a bonus in his line of work.
He is assigned to infiltrate a biker gang that may or may not be dealing arms. Now, these bikers are some bad dudes, which we know because Michael Madsen is their leader. So, right off the bat, you already know that whatever these guys have been accused of, they totally did that shit.
With the help of Virgil, a mechanic/wannabe cop whose drug habit and drug-related propensity for poor impulse control (and the fact that he’s kind of a cock-up) has earned him the nickname ‘Dildo’, Saxon manages to ingratiate himself into Blood’s crew. But, as we learned from Miami Vice, there’s undercover, and then there’s which way is up. Will a character played by Charlie Sheen be able to resist the impulse to go over to the dark side?
Apparently inspired by a true story, this isn’t exactly the ‘Point Break with hogs’ you might be expecting (that would be Stone Cold). Its seeming basis in fact precludes any over-the-top action. So while there are a few fist fights and some gunplay sprinkled throughout, the movie grooves on a more reality based form of tension.
A lot of the tension comes through in Sheen’s better-than-you’d-guess performance. He does a pretty good job of playing the trauma of his past, and his conflicted feelings about his mission. The only aspect of his performance I didn’t buy was his romance with the seldom seen and ever delightful Linda Fiorentino, playing a reporter doing a story on Blood’s crew (who also happens to know he’s undercover due to an earlier meet cute). I buy that her character would choose to sleep with Saxon, because how could anyone resist a mess that hot? But I don’t buy that the very next morning, she would almost immediately agree to let him meet her six-year old son, and that she would start an actual relationship with a clearly troubled man living a potentially fatal double life.
So I didn’t buy that part, but I forgive it, because Linda Fiorentino just has that kind of power over me.
Like all undercover cop movies, the hero gets too close to the villain, and starts to respect him and understand his worldview.
Just so we’re clear on what that means…this is a film where Charlie Sheen thinks listening to Michael Madsen is a good idea.
Playing the Patrick Swayze to Sheen’s dirtbag Keanu, Madsen trades in rhetoric that’s half-brotherhood and half-nihilism. He doesn’t necessarily manage to sell it the way Patrick Swayze nearly convinced me to stop inching down the highway in my metal coffin, but I guess it would probably make sense to somebody who had already seen the worst life had to offer.
As one would expect from this sort of movie, Sheen’s behavior gets increasingly out of control. He smashes up a redneck bar, savagely beats multiple dudes, pulls a gun on a traffic cop, and engages in other less savory activities. But we know things are getting really bad when Charlie Sheen starts partaking of drugs.
It culminates in that inevitable moment where Madsen reveals just how dark he’s willing to go in service to his ideals, forcing Sheen back to his senses. From the start, we all know more or less where this is going, but it’s still a story well told. Focusing less on action and more on character give the actors the space to add texture to what could be just another exploitation flick, and its writing shows just a little more insight and depth than you might think. The themes of abuse border on the tasteless (the first scene is shot in a way as to make Saxon’s father seem like a movie monster), but Sheen does surprisingly nimble work getting it to play in context.
Madsen oozes understated menace in a role that could have been played over-the-top, and Fiorentino is her usual flinty, sexy, too smart for the room self.
What can I tell you? I’m a sucker for biker movies, which are an acquired taste. In the hierarchy, this one ranks above pretty much all of them but below Stone Cold, the urtext of biker flicks, though it’s a very different movie. I do think it’s an underrated flick (or it would be, if anyone actually knew about it), and recommend it for anyone in the mood for a fix on unheralded nineties-style fun.
