City Limits
1984, USA
dir. Aaron
Lipstadt
cast: John
Stockwell, James Earl Jones, Dawn Rae Chong
15 years from now,
a deadly plague has wiped out most adults, leaving children to grow
up in the ruins on their own. A young man leaves his remote desert
home to journey to the city to join the Clippers, a legendary gang of
scavengers. He finds a city divided between the Clippers and their
rivals the DAs, who maintain an uneasy truce. However, the DAs have
done a deal with an evil corporation to take over the city. However,
once they realise the corporation's plan is to enslave the gangs,
they join together to smash their operation.
A fun little film,
which makes interesting use of pop culture detritus, such as the gang
taking moral lessons from comic books. It's got an interesting political
sub-text, where the street gangs reject the
disaster capitalism of the Sunny Corp, who having been contracted by
the government to re-establish control over the city and
proletarianise the gangs into wage slaves in their factories, using
deadly force if required. They realise they have a common interest
and join together to overthrow the corporation and carry on with
their lives of libertarian communism, with the final voice over
telling how the city would now be run for the benefit of those who
lived there. Not the most common message in 80s action movies, it has to be said.
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