Matt Dillon made his acting debut in Over the Edge playing a punk kid, a character he would parlay into a few more coming-of-age movies in subsequent years. He managed to have a pretty fair career despite the typecasting. Here, his nascent bad-boy personality and charm kick the movie up a notch or two, making a household name for himself in the process.New Grenada is a fictional town in the middle of the desert, a planned community. There's nothing for kids to do, save for hanging out at the local recreation center - which inconveniently closes at 6 pm. It's only a matter of time before the garden-variety vandalism worsens, and sure enough, when two kids fire a BB gun at a police-officer's car from an overpass, tensions in the town become proportionally thicker.At the center of the movie is young Carl (Michael Eric Kramer), son of the homeowners' association president, who's trying to get Texas millionaires to buy some prime real estate in town (rather than build a bowling alley). Carl is described as a nice, smart kid who happens to run with a rebellious crowd, particularly the perpetually on-probation Richie (Dillon), who wears his damn-the-man attitude like a pair of tighty whities.The scourge of the kids' existence is authority in the name of one Officer Doberman (Harry Northup), who is not above harassing the kids any chance he gets. And, for much of the movie, he gets plenty of chances. And when the rec center is inevitably shut down (the better to prevent the rich investors from noticing the Kid Problem), all hell really breaks loose in a realistic, tragic denouement.The script (by Charles Haas and Tim Hunter) effectively illustrates the angst of late-seventies teens desperate to do something, anything, to entertain themselves, something that'll gain themselves notice if not notoriety. The movie is loosely based on an incident that occurred in a real-life planned community in California in the early 1970s and certainly still rings true today.

I guess i'm getting old, I found the kids really irritating in this kids vs.adults movie. Kids in a planned community slowly start to go wild after they feel like the adults are ruining their town by attracting new business and paying little attention to their needs (were the kids communist? HOHOHO!). The acting by the teenage actors are terrible except for Matt Dillon who is hilarious as a tough kid. Dillon mouths some really cheesy dialog like "A kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid!!!".Michael Kramer who plays the leader of the kids made me sick, what a little chump, I felt like he needed a nice beating :). The hard rock and punk rock soundtrack do liven things up a little bit. But overall, this film is just dire. Apparently this is Kurt Cobain's favorite movie. Unlike nirvana's music this film does not even amount to a slap on the face of the establishment. It is just weak.

"Over the Edge" is to be commended for its long, hard look at the problem of troubled youth. It looks at what happens when a bunch of 14 year olds and kids even younger decide to defy authority at every turn and indulge in various criminal activities. The adults aren't part of the solution; in fact, they're part of the problem as they remain ignorant of just what their kids are up to. The cops aren't exactly sympathetic to the kids, to boot.The teens in question are part of a suburban planned community named New Granada. Seemingly with little else to do, they often hang around the local recreation centre and go so far as to deal drugs on the grounds. The story centers on Carl (Michael Eric Kramer), an easygoing guy, and Richie (Matt Dillon, making his film debut), his trouble making friend.What's so damn effective about "Over the Edge" is you believe it at every turn. The relationships are credible, for one thing. The performances of the young actors are entirely convincing; Kramer is a natural in the lead and Dillon already shows an obvious charisma as the friend. Pamela Ludwig is appealing as Carls' love interest Cory, as are Tom Fergus as Claude and Tiger Thompson as Johnny. The older actors are all solid, including Andy Romano and Ellen Geer as Carls' worried parents and Harry Northup as party pooping cop Doberman (an appropriate name, that) but the focus stays right where it should, on the restless teens. Lane Smiths' role as visiting businessman Sloan is rather brief, but he has one of the best lines in the film when he surmises that in the parents' hurry to move from the big city to a small community, they turned their kids into the kind of thing from which they were running. The intelligent script by Charlie Haas and Tim Hunter creates a scenario where things get out of control, and the problems with the kids are nowhere near close to being solved. Jonathan Kaplan directs with conviction; his father Sol composed the music score. The hip soundtrack includes tunes from groups ranging from Cheap Trick to Van Halen to The Cars to The Ramones.The finale is troubling but the good news is that, in the end, the film does maintain a degree of hope for its main character.All in all, this is a teen film worth seeking out and remembering. It sure ain't no John Hughes movie, that's for sure.Nine out of 10.

The thing I find extraordinary about this movie is that it captures so well the way we looked and behaved in the 70's. These aren't Hollywood teens, they're real teens. The kids in this movie are almost like a marijuana-hazy tidal pool, self-contained, separate from, and ignored or misunderstood by, adults on the other side of the "generation gap." Which is exactly what it was like.Someone criticized the acting, but that's precisely the point -- these kids aren't acting, they're real. Other Hollywood productions of the era were made by older people who were puzzled by and didn't understand the changes that occurred in the 60's. We used to laugh at their efforts, because they were so clueless. This movie gets us as we really were, and it takes me back in a way that no other movies do. I wish there were an equivalent for the oh-so-wonderful 60's, an era which is very well remembered but the spirit of which has not been preserved.That being said, I find the filmmakers' social attitudes somewhat dated. Arguably, the anything goes attitude of the parents of our generation was a disaster, leading to rampant drug use, teen pregnancy, an epidemic of crime. In particular, (SPOILER) I find the PC notion that a cop is wrong to shoot a kid who pulls a gun on him is more than a little ridiculous. What do the filmmakers expect him to do? Wait to see if a bullet leaves the muzzle, then deflect it if necessary with his Wonder Woman bracelets? You don't have to be an adult to know that drawing a gun, loaded or not, on a police officer is Darwin Awards territory.The few sympathetic adults in this movie actually seem to like the kids, rather than treating them as unfathomable enemies or ignoring them. And because they like and know them, they understand them. But a bit of firmness is necessary as well. For all the guns, cigarettes, pot, booze, and sexuality, these are still kids, working to become adults and needing guidance to do so. In this movie, the firmness comes in the wrong form, delivered by police officers and school officials who have no affinity with or understanding of the kids in their charge. But license isn't the key: events showed that.