Review of American Hardcore (2006) by Grayson M — 23 Jun 2008

I give this three stars only for the fact that the interviews are really good and offered some new insight into the history of the music I love. There is also some great archival footage of shows and old interviews(the ones with the Boston bands are classic! Al Barile of SSD on straight edge-'There's no fucking paaatying going on at the shows.

') It was cool (scary?) to see how some of my idols have aged i.e.- Springa from SSD, Tony from the Adolescents, Greg Ginn from Black Flag, Vic Bondi from Articles of Faith, HR from Bad Brains, etc.

As a comprehensive look at the U.S. hardcore scene of that era, the film fails miserably. There is far too much to be covered in a two-hour movie. The source material deserved a fucking 10-hour series on PBS with each hour covering a different region of the U.

S. and a director/producer who isn't a completely biased toolbag(Steven Blush, I'm talking to you). This was based on a fairly well-researched book that suffered from Blush's extreme bias toward the things and people he felt were important and relevant to the scene back then(in the book, he seems real bitter about everything he talks about, as if he despised the supposed 'glory days' he is writing about).

The movie suffers the same way. In a movie about american hardcore, how the fuck can you completely skip over Dead Kennedy's, The Misfits, Deep Wound and every single band from D.C. besides Minor Threat and SOA(who get only a cursory mention)? I know from the book that Blush isn't too fond of DK's Jello Biafra and could care less about the lesser-known-but-just-as-influential bands like Deep Wound.

The whole movie felt slapped together and really rushed. And the fact that it was done poorly once probably means there will never be a proper(meaning longer and waaaay more detailed) documentary of american hardcore, which is sad because there needs to be one that is objective and not just some salty, ex-show promoter douche's interpretation of it.

My last criticism is the last scene, where the guy from Repo Man says something like "punk is dead!" I say fuck that, it is still alive and well and, IMO, a hell of a lot better these days. In closing, this was a HUGE wasted opportunity.

Steven Blush, fuck you for being an egotistical prick instead of doing justice to the material you had to work with. You pretty much ruined it for the rest of us.