Quicksilver

Directed by Tom Donnelly

At the USA Charles

PRODUCERS MICHAEL RACHMIL and Daniel Melnick probably thought that Quicksilver, Footloose's Kevin Bacon's new star vehicle, would do for bicycle riding what Rocky did for boxing and Chariots of Fire did for track and field. No such luck. This aspiring urban tale of a oncehip and in-control commodities trader who becomes a bicycle messenger offers the viewer little more than a confused story line.

Briefly (very briefly), the story line focuses on the aforementioned Bacon as Jack Casey, a financial whiz extraordinaire, able to turn a profit of $30 million for his brokerage in three short years, breaking every record within reach. Then, inexplicably, he makes a bad deal one fateful afternoon and loses not only his own saving and his position on the stock market, but his parent's retirement money.

Financially strapped, he drifts for a time, nothing but failure on his mind, despite his father's (Gerald S. O'Loughlin) impassioned speech in which he tells Jack that "We Caseys can take a punch." Donnelly clues us in to his mental and professional demise by showing us clips our our hero walking the streets of San Francisco (no pun intended) with his hair progressively longer and his clothes progressively more tattered in each shot.

Things aren't all that bad, though, because he finally rejoins the ranks of the gainfully employed when he becomes a bicycle messenger for Quicksilver (hence the title of the movie). There, he meets up with aspiring capitalist Hector Rodriguez (Paul Rodriguez), a happy-go-lucky Mexican who's biding his time at Quicksilver's until he has saved enough money to purchase a hot-dog cart and work his way up the ladder of success.

IN WALKS TERRY, (Jami Gertz) whom you'll remember as the inimitable prepster Muffy from the short-lived television sit-com Square Pegs. Due to the poor screenwriting talents of Ezra Sacks, poor Terry is given a rather confused character make-up: she tells Hector that her father is a decorated Army flier but spins tales of her parents' opening for Frank Sinatra in Vegas for the erstwhile Jack. No explanation of these inconsistencies is ever provided. She's clearly a runaway, but from whom or what is unclear. In a rather impassioned speech to Jack, on whom she's predictably developed a school-girl crush, she whines that he has "options," albeit unused ones for the time being, but options none the less, while he must realize that she has none.

The film's denoument concerns some rather well-paid if shady messengering for a sleazy drug dealer named Gypsy (Rudy Ramos). Too cowardly or wise to deliver his product himself, he recruits money-hungry young innocents from Quicksilver to do his dirty work for him. One delivery boy, Apache (David Harris), has already fallen prey to Gypsy's ugly side: having dared to take a cut of his action, Gypsy strikes back, hunting Apache down in his car in an inferior version of the chase scene from The French Connection.

Predictably, our sweet young Terry falls into the trap as well, eventually becoming so enmeshed in these illicit activities that only Jack's intervention--he the proverbial knight on a white horse, or in this case Schwin charger--can save her.

What can one say about Kevin Bacon's performance except that its enough to make one wonder whether or not he's the same person who played the delightful Fenn in Diner. One-sided would be a good word to describe his portrayal of Casey, and the only reason that comes to mind that might explain why he took a part in this film is that he probably needed to make a house payment at the time.

All in all, however, Quicksilver's title may not be inappropriate: like mercury, it may be fatal if swallowed.