Movies - My Bodyguard

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	Movies - My Bodyguard

An introduction to a new era

It was 1980, fifteen years before Larry Clark would introduce us to his dark portrayal of young adults in Kids
. Films featuring teen characters were primarily nostalgic (Grease
, American Graffiti
) or fantastic (Carrie
, Friday the 13th
) and usually starred actors who had not been to school since their last parent-teacher conference. Realistic depictions of modern teen life were few and far between. That was about to change. Two movies opened the way for John Hughes, whose teen "melodramedies" would rule the rest of the decade; Adrian Lyne's second film Foxes and the directorial debut of Tony Bill, My Bodyguard.

Synopsis

Chris Makepeace (fresh from working with Bill Murray in Meatballs
) plays high-school student Clifford Peache, newly transferred to Chicago with his widowed hotel-manager father (Fernwood 2Nite's Martin Mull), a workaholic who tries to make time whenever possible for his son, and his grandmother (Ruth Gordon), a woman unwilling to act her age, and as a result, gets her son in frequent trouble. For Clifford, The new school offers a few friendly faces (including Joan Cusack as Shelly and an uncredited Jennifer Beals) but these are over-shadowed by the dark countenances of a band of toughs led by Moody (a pre-S. E. Hinton Matt Dillon). Moody is the sort of skinny, greasy-haired punk who compensates for his small stature with pure white-trash vitriol and a criminal cunning most likely cultivated from multiple viewings of The Godfather
. Moody and his boys offer "protection" from Ricky (Adam Baldwin of The Patriot
and Serenity
), the school boogeyman. Rumors abound that he shot a cop, shot a boy in the head or raped a teacher; the only hope for survival is to turn over your lunch money. Being the sort of protagonist that would make Gregory Peck proud, Clifford doesn’t allow his complete lack of fighting ability to sway him from the path of righteousness. He refuses to succumb to their extortion. This results in the sort of bullying that, in a time of metal-detectors and massacres, seems quaint; after-school chases, basketball fouls, and locker stuffing. Nevertheless, it all becomes too much for Clifford who finally gives in to paying the protection money; to Ricky.

The hulking pariah agrees to serve, for free, as Clifford’s bodyguard. The effect this has on Moody’s gang is tremendous. Apparently, they’ve grown to believe their own hype and back down from Ricky without a fight. Clifford attempts to build a friendship with his new henchman, but Ricky initially refuses. But when Clifford follows him around one day, Ricky soon comes around and accepts him as a friend. But trouble rises when the loathsome Moody hires his own bodyguard named Mike. Mike looks like the sort that should have finished school when Elvis died but instead, remains fixed in the past with his increasingly flabbier but still large frame and intimidating demeanor, but not so tough that a badass like Ricky couldn’t handle. Ricky does not respond though as Mike and Moody subject him to verbal taunts and physical abuse. He stands idly as they vandalize his newly rebuilt motorcycle and throw it into a pond. Why won't he fight back?

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