MOVIE REVIEW : FRESH OFF THE FARM AND ‘OUT OF BOUNDS’ IN L.A.

In “Out of Bounds” (selected theaters), Daryl Cage (Anthony Michael Hall) is caught in another movie culture clash.

He’s an Iowa farm boy plunged onto the wild streets of nightmarish, glitzy-grungy Los Angeles after picking up the wrong tote bag at the airport. Soon he finds himself with a million-dollar heroin cache and two murdered relatives, hordes of cops and crooks on his tail. As director Richard Tuggle has explained, it’s another pseudo-Hitchcockian “wrong man” thriller plot.

But even if Hitchcock’s chase thrillers were the inspiration, with their falsely accused heroes fleeing police through exotic landscapes, the master wouldn’t have approved of this tribute. Logic, character, coherence, psychology--all those vital thriller elements disappear as quickly as the Iowa corn.

In the center, as the farmboy, Hall--who was hilarious in “Sixteen Candles” and touching in “The Breakfast Club”--gives a sometimes zonked-out, blank-eyed performance that suggests a hooked fish beating its tail on the dock, about to drown in the air.

In a way, you can hardly blame him. The Los Angeles created by Tuggle, cinematographer Bruce Surtees and writer Tony Kayden is less believable than Oz. It’s a murderous playground of phony-jive junkies and coolly incredulous cops, open all night like Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Kayden and Tuggle hit more familiar landmarks than a tour bus, but they leave the impression that Los Angeles is all Venice Beach and Hollywood Boulevard. The peculiar flavor of the city--its geographical sprawl, the fact it closes down so early--is rarely conveyed. And Cage’s adventures quickly surpass all reasonable bounds of belief.

Consider Gaddis, the movie’s maniacal killer (Jeff Kober), who murders for $1 million in heroin, then sends it all through an airport luggage line in a common red duffel bag anyone could grab. Or Daryl’s behavior: This simple, knife-throwing farm lad, after discovering the gory corpses of his brother and sister-in-law, picks up a gun, shoots a neighbor in a struggle, flees on foot in a strange city, dodges the cops and commandeers a motorcycle by holding the gun to the driver’s head. (Where did he get the flair, or even the inclination? Has he just finished watching “The Hitcher” on cable TV?)

Kayden’s script--or at least what it becomes on the screen--is full of short cuts, loose ends and blind alleys. It almost wallows in unoriginality. There are times, however, when “Out of Bounds” (rated R) churns up a halfway ominous mood--thanks to Surtees’ lighting and composer Stewart Copeland’s throbbing rhythms--and when the actors spit off a little melodramatic menace. But these times vanish quickly, and the rest of the movie’s creative efforts are typified by the performance of Meatloaf as a local pusher. He does most of his role lying in bed, staring in disbelief.