MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Bridge’: Buddy Story With a Drug Twist

Semi-autobiographical coming-of-age movies have some built-in traps and Mike Binder’s “Crossing the Bridge” (citywide) tumbles right into them. In this rock ‘n’ roll ‘70s reverie about a trio of high school buddies bumbling a drug-smuggling adventure, Binder mines his own memories, sometimes movingly or humorously, sometimes opportunistically. But, just as in his script for 1990’s “Coup de Ville,” he tends to pump them up, restage his past in action movie or teen-sex comedy terms.

And, if the big bold strokes of modern marketing-hook screenwriting sometimes work for high-tech buddy-buddy crash-a-thons, they don’t enhance a story like this. They tend to flatten it. “Crossing the Bridge” has a wistful, melancholy feel, and maybe it’s as much for wasted opportunities in the movie as in the characters’ lives.

Set in 1975, when disco and Jimmy Carter were on the horizon, “Bridge” has a grim, running-on-empty tone. (Fittingly, Jackson Browne is on the soundtrack, along with Elton John, Creedence Clearwater and Bob Seger.) It’s set in a Detroit suburb near Canada where life grinds down three lower-class post-high-school protagonists, whose classmates are growing into sneering, smug pre-yuppie snobs.

This trio of football buddies--Danny the quarterback stud (Stephen Baldwin), Tim the hothead (Jason Gedrick) and Mort the brain (Josh Charles)--are still bombing around in their battered, unregistered blue car, the “War Wagon,” still quarreling over who rides shotgun. And, when they cross the Manchester bridge into Canada to hit the strip bars, the border crossing is shot from beneath, above, and in full portentous helicopter swoops: an obvious setup for a big symbolic climax or crisis.

But how? What are the bridge’s symbolic borders? Boyhood and manhood? Friendship and the world? Canada and America? Family values and the cultural elite? Coors and Budweiser?

No. Actually, the trio are caught between outlaws and cops, drugs and just saying “No.” And the main suspense here comes from our wonderment at how a Touchstone movie is going to finesse its way through a story about a trio tempted to smuggle what first is described as a load of hashish, and eventually proves to be heroin. (We shouldn’t worry. This is the company that turned Hollywood Boulevard hookers into the antiseptic crowd-pleaser “Pretty Woman.”)

Binder probably isn’t trying to candy-coat his subject. But “Bridge” has its own political gyroscope. It remembers, but barely inhales. And when it does inhale, just like the dysfunctional dealer who hires this trio, it coughs. Binder, a comedy writer, tends to treat drama as a series of setups and punch lines. Everything fits, everything happens fast, except for the actors’ cue pickups. Characters conveniently lose jobs or houses, right before the hash run. Dope czar Richard Edson’s gang is an evil version of “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.” New York Times reporter Manny Goldfarb (Hy Anzell) has dinner with writer Mort, mentions Hitler and promptly dies of a heart attack.

Mort’s unrequited love, shiksa goddess Carol (Cheryl Pollak), finally consummates his fantasies in a tryst set to Tony Bennett’s “Shadow of Your Smile.” And, all too often, the movie’s main theme seems to be how brainy Mort survived and became a big-time Hollywood writer.

“Crossing the Bridge” has its moments: Richard Edson’s zero-cold shakedown scene, some of the trio’s badinage, the way cinematographer Tom Sigel catches that Midwestern autumnal feel. But, overall, it’s a film that seems trapped on the commercial-personal borderline. Too much is designed, not enough felt. Instead of making a movie out of memory, Binder turns memory into just another movie.

‘Crossing the Bridge’

Josh Charles: Mort Golden

Jason Gedrick: Tim Reese

Stephen Baldwin: Danny Morgan

Cheryl Pollak: Carol Brockton

A Touchstone Pictures presentation of an Outlaw production, released by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution Inc. Director-screenwriter Mike Binder. Producers Jeffrey Silver, Robert Newmeyer. Cinematographer Tom Sigel. Editor Adam Weiss. Costumes Carol Ramsey. Music Peter Himmelman. Production design Craig Stearns. Art director Jack D. L. Ballance. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (language, violence, sensuality, drug use).