Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Cast: Stephen Lang, Michael Carmine, Lauren Holly

Sometimes I fear that some of my readers might have got the wrong idea of what kind of a person I happen to be. I say this, because of the many schlocky movies I have watched for The Unknown Movies and my great enthusiasm for many of them. Because of that, you might think that I am a depraved person who freely flouts the law any chance that he gets. Well, as it turns out, you would most likely find my private life to be very boring. My life for the most part is extremely routine, with focus on getting all my required chores (including writing reviews) completed well enough and on time. The only thing close to a crime is when I ignore the endless red lights at the intersections in my neighborhood and jaywalk through them. From what I have just revealed to you, you have probably guessed that my childhood wasn't all that irresponsible and law-breaking as well. And you would be right about that. For the most part, I toed the line and didn't do anything that would risk me getting into trouble with my parents or any adult authority figures. I never smoked anything legal or illegal, never took one of the family cars out for a drive at night, and while I did once drink alcohol before coming of age, I was careful not to drink to excess. Still, there were a few times where I did stumble in front of my parents, and my parents felt they had to punish me. The punishments that I got will probably feel very tame to you - being denied the privilege of getting to watch television, or being denied permission to leave the house, those sorts of things. But for me, those punishments worked, and afterwards I always felt determined not to try and screw up again and face further punishment.

Sometimes, either during a punishment or when I was able to access of my privileges, I would wonder what my parents would do if I did something extremely bad. If I had come home drunk one night, shoplifted, or had a wild party in the home that damaged the furniture, I can only imagine what great punishment I would get. For that matter, sometimes I would wonder what my parents would have done if I had been a real bad youth, one that was constantly getting into trouble both at home and outside of home. I do know that my parents always wanted me to see the consequences of my actions, whether my actions were good or bad. So I think that if I had done something really bad that was enough to have broken the law and I got arrested, they would have accepted if the justice system decided that it would be best if I were to go into a juvenile corrections system of some sort. Oh sure, they probably would have visited me from time to time while I was there, and kept up a regular correspondence with me during my stint behind bars - they would have still had love for me. But they would still have wanted me to know that I had to pay my debt to the society that I lived in and hurt to some degree or another. But while that is my theory, at the same time I have wondered on occasion what they would have done if the standard punishment for my juvenile punishment did not work, and once released I got myself into trouble again for a various number of events. Maybe they would have still tried to help me before I turned 19 (the age of majority in the Canadian province that I lived in), but once I reached that age, they may very well have broken all ties with me.

In recent years, I have heard of another kind of treatment that parents sometimes make their uncontrollable children go through - the "boot camp" system. You might have seen this on sleazy daytime talk shows like Maury, while juvenile offenders are sent to a military-style camp in the middle of nowhere, and are put through the wringer with exercise and work with the belief that all of this military-style discipline will drain the bad side out of the kids and make them into better youths. I don't know if my parents would have ever gone to that extreme if I had been a no-good kid, but having seen how some youths are simply no good at all, I can see why some parents would try it on their kids. With what I have seen on the subject, the idea of youth boot camps could make for an interesting and compelling serious film drama, but I'm not most people - I am sure many audiences would find a serious treatment boring. That's probably why the movie Band Of The Hand took the premise and made it more into an action-oriented telling. Set in Florida, the beginning of the movie introduces us to five youths whose criminal records at their ages are already so extensive, they are threatened to be prosecuted and locked up as adult offenders. But the court system instead decides the five will be sent deep into Florida swamp country under the control of a Vietnam veteran named Joe (Stephen Lang, Avatar). Once in the countryside, Joe in short notice gets the angry and unruly teenagers under his control, and with his military skills starts whipping them in shape and making them feel part of an important team. Eventually, all five youths change for the better, and after they are released from the program, they all settle together in a home in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. But their efforts to clear up the neighborhood irks local drug dealer Cream (Laurence Fishburne, Fast Break).... who is controlled by big drug kingpin Nestor (James Remar, Quiet Cool)... who currently has control of Nikki (Lauren Holly, Seven Minutes In Heaven), the girlfriend of one of the youths. Soon it becomes apparent that Miami will be heating up not just from all the sunshine.

With Band Of The Hand being a product of the 1980s, having Michael Mann as the producer, and being filmed in Florida, it probably comes as no surprise that there is a strong feeling of the '80s TV show Miami Vice coming off throughout. I was prepared for this, even welcoming to be immersed in 1980s culture since I grew up in that era. The '80s music from Prince, Mr. Mister, and others was pleasing to my ears, and seeing the styles of hair and clothing brought back memories... as well as a few chuckles seeing how they would be out of place in today's public. Actor-turned-director Paul Michael Glaser (The Running Man) gives the movie the distinctive colors and sleekness found in many other '80s movies, with some impressive shots and camera movements; the eye-catching opening shot, for instance, must have taken an incredible amount of time to set up. And I have to admit that the movie has some great atmosphere. You will get a sense of the hot humid air as well as the muck and tangle of the swamps of Miami and the surrounding area. And when the characters are onscreen, you never get a feeling that they are in a comfortable or safe place. They have to keep their guard up at all times, and you can sense that they are struggling mightily to keep in control, and you can also tell they have doubts if they will ever prevail.  However, Glaser doesn't do well in other areas, such as pacing. The first half of the movie, set in the swamp as the youths are trained, often feels as slow and exhausting as if you were one of those characters trying to cross the swamp on foot. Things do pick up somewhat when Joe and the youths return to Miami, but boy, until that point you may feel that the movie is going nowhere very slowly.

As for the action portion of the movie, I first have to report that there isn't that much of it as you may think. When the movie's in swamp country for the first half, the "action" just consists of the character getting into brief brawls that are nothing special. As for later in Miami, the action (fist-fighting with a gang, a shoot-out with Cream, and the climactic raid on a drug laboratory) does have its moments at times, but not quite enough to make any particular action scene stand out. The main problem I had with the action sequences is that I didn't particularly care who would get injured or killed. And from that, you have probably guessed that the characters in Band Of The Hand are not all that great. I don't really blame the actors for this; both the well-known and the unknown performers show talent, but they seem to be held back by the screenplay, as well as Glaser's direction. With the antagonists Nestor and Cream, the script doesn't give them heck of a lot of screen time, seemingly assuming that since they deal in drugs, that's all we need to know in deciding how we would like their fates to be. The youths on the other hand get a lot of screen time, but we don't really learn about them despite getting to see how they got captured and incarcerated. What were they thinking before they got captured, and what influenced them to think that way? The movie doesn't go into much depth with this. Why do the Cuban American youth and the African American youth hate each other so much beyond standard racism? We aren't told this. After being put together despite hating each other's guts, what motivates them to change their ways and agree to work together? The movie skips out on these details. As for the character of Joe, the fact that he's a Vietnam veteran will probably tell you his ultimate fate, but what's even worse is that we don't really know what drives him. He doesn't have that much personality, he's short with words, and when we find out his tragic past, we don't really see how this affected him.

The tragic past of Joe gives another problem to Band In The Hand, this problem being credibility. What happened in Joe's past would in real life not make him able to be hired by the Floridan government to whip up these five particular youths. But that is not the only illogical misstep the screenplay makes. For example, the first day the five youths are in the swamp, Joe quickly greets them and then leaves so they can spend the night by themselves. That's right - he leaves them in a very precarious situation, not just from the fact that the Cuban American and African American youths are hostile to each other. Joe also doesn't have a radio to use for help if there should be an accident, which would have been handy when one youth is bitten by a poisonous snake. There are other illogical touches to the story and characters, but it's possible that some explanation to them eventually got cut out in the editing room. I have that theory because there are also many places in the movie where it seems that important details are missing. When Joe and the youths, for example, set up shop in Little Havana and soon are threatened, we get only about a minute of Joe training the youths in using firearms and combat techniques. Then not long afterwards, they have their first battle and perform as good as Navy Seals. Also, Nikki's relationship with Nestor (or with her boyfriend, one of the youths) doesn't really seem to be all that clear, particularly how all three characters were working together before the boyfriend was arrested. Maybe the first cut of the movie made by the editor made more sense, but I bet that it was even slower and less exciting as the movie is presently at its excessive length (110 minutes). To sum up, even if you are in a nostalgic mood for the culture and excesses 1980s fads and entertainment, it's very likely you'll find Band Of The Hand not grand, understand?

(Posted July 22, 2024)