MOVIE REVIEW : ‘VISION’: AN ATHLETE MEETS OLDER WOMAN

The title of “Vision Quest” (citywide) suggests science fiction, but the film is yet another coming-of-age story, poorly told.

Credibility and even simple logic seem to have gotten short shrift in its transposition to the screen from a highly praised first novel by Terry Davis. The result is a film of some lovely and funny moments, with some appealing people, that finally disappoints.

Every bit as effective as he is in the current “Birdy” and “Mrs. Soffel,” Matthew Modine plays a likable Spokane high school senior who needs to win a wrestling scholarship if he’s to go to college. Actually he’s pretty much got it made, but unlike Tom Cruise’s realistic football star in “All the Right Moves,” Modine is a dreamer, willing to risk his health and the chance at the scholarship by dropping 23 pounds so he can compete against the toughest guy in the state (Frank Jasper).

Since Jasper, who is built like Mr. America, trains by running up and down stadium steps while hoisting a seven-foot telephone pole overhead, you pray that the already slender but tall Modine knows full well how to apply his wrestling maxim: “Balance is more important than strength and speed.”

In the midst of Modine’s increasingly severe regimen, an Older Woman (of 21), Linda Fiorentino, drops into his heretofore virginal existence. She’s a glamorously tough, husky-voiced type from Trenton, N.J., who seems as surprised as we are that she’s heading for San Francisco to become a painter. How she happened to detour to Spokane is unclear, but when she buys a lemon of a used car, Modine’s mechanic father (Ronny Cox) slugs his boss for cheating her. Cox winds up fired--and Fiorentino, short on funds, winds up a guest in Cox and Modine’s humble, womanless abode while her car is being repaired, a job that unaccountably threatens to take forever. (All of this plays as contrived as it sounds.)

Director Harold Becker and writer Darryl Ponicsan develop the relationship between Modine and the dark, sexy Fiorentino (in her film debut) with humor and tenderness. But beyond living up to Cox’s description of her as “a girl who’s been around the block a few times,” we don’t know nearly enough about her. Where did she get her expensive wardrobe? How does she intend to support herself while studying art? It’s as if the film makers decided that if they went for pure emotion, they wouldn’t have to concern themselves with anything else.

About an hour into the film you suddenly get the feeling that you’re watching a dying athlete saga, that staple of TV movies. Earlier, Modine spoke feelingly in class of a poem’s expression of the fleetingness of life; now he’s developing chronic nosebleeds, apparently because of his crazy regimen--but what if the nosebleeds are indicative of something far more ominous? Without giving away the finish, let’s just say that Becker and Ponicsan leave you feeling terribly manipulated, since they and the very talented Modine really do make you care about this sweet, headstrong kid.

If “Vision Quest” (rated R for some adult situations and some strong language), handsomely photographed on location by Owen Roizman, never comes into focus itself, a number of its people do.

You can believe that Harold Sylvester is a really fine teacher (but not that Modine would make a crass remark to him) and that Charles Hallahan is an equally good and caring coach. As Modine’s best pal, however, the capable Michael Schoeffling is stuck with having to hide his unhappy home life by pretending to be an Indian. (Why the one should lead to the other is unclear.) But J. C. Quinn, perfectly cast, is terrific as a middle-age loner, a cook at the hotel where Modine works part time, who proves a better friend to Modine than he had realized.

‘VISION QUEST’

A Warners release of a Guber-Peters Co. production. Executive producers Stan Weston, Adam Fields. Producers Jon Peters, Peter Guber. Director Harold Becker. Screenplay Darryl Ponicsan; based on a novel by Terry Davis. Camera Owen Roizman. Music Tangerine Dream. Production designer Bill Malley. Costumes Susan Becker. Film editor Maury Winetrobe. With Matthew Modine, Linda Fiorentino, Michael Schoeffling, Ronny Cox, Harold Sylvester, Charles Hallahan, Frank Jasper, R. H. Thomson, J. C. Quinn, Daphne Zuniga, Roberts Blossom, James Gammon.

Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (parental guidance advised).