FILM REVIEW : A Low-Budget Gem in ‘Streets’ Teen Thriller

Katt Shea Ruben’s “Streets” opens today at the Ritz on Hollywood Boulevard without any warning whatsoever and virtually no advertising. This is a shame because Ruben continues to show that she is a first-rate talent, as terrific at handling hard action with style and dispatch as at drawing the best from her casts.

As in such earlier films as “Stripped to Kill” Ruben and her co-writer and producer husband Andy create three-dimensional, involving characters. This time they tell us of a sweet, upper-middle-class Santa Barbara teen-ager (David Mendenhall) who has come to Los Angeles with some vague idea of forming a rock group.

Wandering around the beach, he abruptly finds himself helping a pretty girl (Christina Applegate), who turns out to be a drug-addicted hooker, to escape on his motorcycle from a murderous psychopath.

Soon, the kids are on the run from the crazed killer, and despite their radically different backgrounds, come to care for each other.

Ruben and her resourceful cinematographer Phedon Papamichael make highly atmospheric use of largely unfamiliar local settings, and Ruben balances breakneck pacing with quiet, poignant interludes.

The R rating for “Streets” is apt, but Ruben never lingers over the requisite genre violence. Best of all Ruben ends her film on a touching note of realism.