Fast Talking (1984)

User Rating:

5.7/10   

Director:

Ken Cameron

Writer:

Ken Cameron (written by)

Release Date:

23 April 1986 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

What an ace way to stuff up your last year at school

Plot:

A bright young teenager from a broken home uses his quick wits and glib tongue to get out of trouble - but they also get him into it. |

Plot Keywords:

Greyhound | Teen | Independent Film

Awards:

4 nominations

Cast

Steve Bisley	...	Redback
Tracy Mann	...	Sharon Hart
Peter Hehir	...	Ralph Carson
Denis Moore	...	Yates
Rod Zuanic	...	Steve Carson
Toni Allaylis	...	Vicki
Chris Truswell	...	Moose
Gail Sweeny	...	Narelle
Julie McGregor	...	Steve's mother
Gary Cook	...	Al Carson
Peter Collingwood	...	Principal
Ron Hackett	...	Woodwork teacher
Richard Carter	...	Geography teacher
Frank Lloyd	...	Careers advisor
John Cobley	...	Roll call teacher

Runtime:

95 min

Country:

Australia

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Australia:M

Filming Locations:

Balmain High School, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Company:

Australian Film Commission, The

Without A Narrative Foundation, This Film Cannot Achieve The Desired Mood.

Director Ken Cameron, a former high school instructor, attempts here to transpose some of his teaching experiences to the screen, apparently conceptually convincing enough to garner guaranteed funding from the Australian Film Commission along with the Merchant/Ivory production team, but any points of interest that may have been persuasive to his financial angels are lost in the completed production. Set and filmed in a cheerless lower class district of Sydney, with its casting auditions held at various schools of that city for many of the younger featured players, the piece won an award at Cannes Junior, yet there is precious little to sustain viewer interest in most sequences, responsibility for this shortcoming falling upon Cameron's disjointed screenplay. The storyline follows the fundamentally aimless and anti-social activities of Steve Carson (a ferret-like Rod Zuanic), who occupies his time by selling drugs, stealing, lying, cheating, etc., for no particular reason, while providing very little of entertainment value for viewers, and even less for the high school teachers and administrators who must have dealings with him. Steve's father is an unemployed sot, his mother has left the home to be with another man, and his older brother utilizes him as a schoolyard dope dealer, plainly a dispiriting background for the youth, but as depicted one feels no sympathy for him, as his deportment appears to stem from stupidity rather than as reaction to socio/economic pressures in this erratically paced work wherein puerile incident assumes precedence above character development. Additionally, young Carson's family members, equally moronic fellow students, and school staff are seldom well-drawn, the only characters of abiding interest being Sharon (Tracey Mann), a new teacher at the high school and, in particular, "Redback" (Steve Bisley), owner of a junkyard for motorcycles, who gives Steve an opportunity to learn a trade (welding) and also to restore a wrecked motorcycle, thereby opening a way for the boy to flee from an uncivil environment. Because Cameron fails to unify his visuals with potential effects that may be felt from the script, a viewer will find it difficult to empathise with Steve, whose general behaviour fails to demonstrate knowledge of possible linkage between causes of his actions (theft, drug sales, et alia) and their consequences, with apparent altruism by Redback being the film's sole strong positive component. Bisley, a top-flight actor, gives his role some depth, but we are too often in the company here of juvenile halfwits, directionless slum based teenagers who fittingly cluster at various trash dumps. The characters actually have no place to go, nor does the episodic plot, and a viewer should care a little about those performers with whom time is shared in a film, but few will be apt to do so in this instance.