The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 49

Friday, September 27, 1991 D-3 JIJIP V. Opening punch fails to guarantee a knockout SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER if Working-class boxer movie too abstracted to score By Michael Sragow EXAMINER MOVE CRITIC h'M (saVi i ROSSING THE Line," a 7I GRC coi le contemporary bare-knuck- boxing movie starring 'S -V it if I ft" 1 Scott Bakula, fet, and Sinbad play two members of an unlikely college team in "Necessary Roughness." Three laughs and a cloud of dust in 'Roughness' Liam Neeson and Joanne Whalley-Kilmer in "Crossing the Line" you'd expect. "Roughness" does have well choreographed on-field action and cameos by real NFL stars such as Jerry Rice, Roger Craig and Dick Butkus, whose pencil mustache is Liam Neeson as a Scotch working-class hero, muffs its powerhouse potential long before the pummeling finish. Rarely does a movie that begins this well end so badly. In the nifty opening scenes, a Glasgow racketeer, Matt Mason (Ian Bannen) tests Neeson's Danny Scoular, an unemployed ex-miner in the small town of Thorn-bank, by manipulating him into a pub fight with one of Mason's thugs.

Scoular wins, easily. So Mason tosses 50-pound notes in Secular's face and recruits him for a mysterious slugfest. Everything that comes between the opening credits and the first sequence's fade-out is tense, atmospheric or funny. Within minutes you get to know Secular's warm yet troubled relationship with his two kids and his working wife (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer). Employers blackball him because he's a militant union man and, though he tries hard, he's not cut out to be a househusband.

The working-class ensemble conveys a prickly reverse snobbery. The locals in the pub snicker at Mason as a city slicker, and lionize Scoular for decking a cop and going to jail during "the great miner's strike of '84." Billy Connolly, sporting an earring and a loud silvery suit, is instantly love-hateable as Scoular's childhood chum, Fran-kie, a would-be slicker himself who helps seal the deal with Mason. The director, David Leland, who scored with his feature debut, "Wish You Were Here" (and flopped with his second feature, "Checking knows how to the funniest thing in the movie, Elizondo and Robert Loggia, as his assistant, are good together, too, especially in a tongue-in-cheek him to transcend those instincts. Sadly, this movie crosses the line that separates hard-hitting social drama from thudding moral-ism. The climactic bare-knuckle brawl is written and staged as a corrupting horror show.

It's sub-Conradian: a bleeding-heart depiction of the heart of darkness. The story exploits Neeson's masochistic streak less playfully than "Darkman." Not even this strong, expressive actor can overcome the blend of straitjacket and hair shirt that handcuffs "Crossing the Line." hospital scene after Elizondo's Vince Lombardi-Iike character has imagined heart attack. Otherwise, "Necessary Rough ness" is as blandly enjoyable and hard to remember as a San Diego Chargers game from Week 2. proves himself on the field; inspirational locker-room speeches; a student-professor love affair; a little school that beats a big school on the last play of the game; a big, ugly guy who gets kissed at the end by the pretty girl. Oh, and "Necessary Roughness" features a female kicker, played very nicely by Kathy Ireland, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit model who's in the TV ads.

A female kicker; that's a new idea, I guess. Anyway: Bakula is Paul Blake, a Texas high school hero who belatedly enrolls at Texas State U. (home of the Fighting Armadillos), who are on probation for all kinds of infractions. He has to earn the respect of the tough, new head coach, Ed Gennero (Hector Elizon-do), and the love of a good woman, his journalism prof, Suzanne Carter (Harley Jane Kozak). The team is a rag-tag gaggle of misfits.

The center cant find the ball on snaps; the swift wide receiver can't catch; Blake has, as they say, a cannon, but no one can pass-block. The team goes winless until the kicker, Lucy, comes over from the women's soccer squad and Blake finds himself as a man and a team leader. The finale is what Football comedy amiable, uninspired By David Armstrong EXAMINER STAFF CRITIC IF THE new football comedy "Necessary Roughness" were a team, it would be called for delay of game. You keep waiting for this amiable but uninspired picture to get started, and it does, in fits and starts. Then you wait some more.

Before you know it, there's no time left on the clock. The film, starring Scott Bakula as a 34-year-old freshman quarterback who's trying to have the college career he should have had years before, is, at least, good-natured, and that helps atone for its shortage of new ideas. Did I say shortage? Actually, there are no new ideas. This movie does, however, have: A crusty head coach who has to learn to loosen up; a crusty assistant coach who has to take over the team for the Big Game; bullies from the arch-rival school who play dirty; a rich kid who proves himself on the field; a poor kid who "Golden Boy." But Don McPherson's screenplay stumbles as it moves away from the flesh and blood of Thorn-bank and into the pulp underworld, where every maneuver is a predictable double cross. The script follows the structure of William Mcll-vanney's novel Big without grasping the texture and depth that make it real Once the action shifts to Glasgow, Leland veers into fancy abstractions.

His Glasgow is a tawdry, underpopulated Everycity not a fascinating place to spend roughly 40 minutes of screen time. The characterizations remain thumbnail sketches; by the end they are worn to the cuticles. The most gripping paradox of sensitive-boxer movies is the way they jolt a viewer's adrenaline with the most primal of sports even as they criticize boxing's human waste and agony. "On the Waterfront" is great because it makes you understand why ex-boxer Terry Malloy's ring-trained instincts tempt him to take violent revenge on his brother's murderers and how a newfound morality enables 'Necessary Roughness' CAST: Scott Bakula, Robert Loggia, Harley Jane Kosak DIRECTOR: Stan Dragoti WRITERS: Rick Natkin and David Fuller RATED: PQ THEATERS: Galaxy, New Mission, Empire, St. Francis, Century Plaza 8, Geneva Drive-In EVALUATION: 'Crossing the Line' CAST: Liam Neeson DIRECTOR: David Leland WRITER: Don McPherson, from William Mcllvanney's novel, "The Big Man" RATED: THEATER: Kabuki 8 EVALUATION: build anticipation.

Giving satisfaction is another matter. "Crossing the Line" promises to fill in the outlines of Hollywood's sensitive-boxer movies with fresh details. What gets your hopes up is the prospect of seeing a revitalized Yo, It's hardly deceiving IT 'Homes, grow up! f. A i 1 'Hanfrin' With the Homeboys' makes a 1 1 1 Ml 1 4 its points with quirky characters By Barbara Shulgasser EXAMINER STAFF CRTTIC ANGIN' WITH the Homeboys" has much in Doug Doug, left, Reggie Montgomery in "Hangin' With the Homeboys" common with "Boyz 1 the Hood" in its earnest attempt to make inner-city minority youths start taking responsibility for their misfortunes. John Heard and Goldie Hawn play husband and wife in "Deceived.

By Barbara Shulgasser EXAMNER 8TAFF CRITIC ALMOST EVERYTHING about "Deceived" reminds you of something else. The plot recalls Hitchcock's "Suspicion," in which a warm, loving, ideal husband played by Cary Grant marries Joan Fontaine, a woman he hardly knows but who is nevertheless mad for him. Slowly, she finds that he's been telling her lies, that he is out of money and that her life might be in danger. Until the end, we wonder if Grant is plotting his wife's murder. Hitchcock's original ending vilified Grant but the studio decided audiences wouldn't buy it, so a new, more appealing finale was shot.

In "Deceived," the script hints that Jack (John Heard) is not such a good guy. But unlike his wife, Adrienne (Goldie Hawn), who is willing to believe the worst about him at the first hint of monkey business, we wonder if the whole trick of the plot won't be to demonstrate how a nice guy can be made to look evil by circumstances. The film begins with Jack and Adrienne's accidental meeting. Soon after, Jack, who works in the art world, runs into Adrienne, who restores art The interest is immediate. The next we see of them, they have a 5-year-old daughter and a seemingly happy marriage.

But all is not what it seems. Jack, Adrienne begins to fear, has been living a secret life, which he has easily hidden behind his heavy travel schedule and a charming and glib manner. What seems jarring about Mary Agnes Donoghue and Derek Saunders script is how little it takes for Adrienne to entirely abandon her lov-held trust and Recuse Jack of When Willie insists that every 1. jumping the subway turnstile, wreck a car and disrupt the relative peace of a posh pool hall But, with the exception of Johnny, the main characters are such irredeemable neanderthals that one's patience is quickly exhausted. One fears that some people may miss the director's point and look at these jerks as heroes.

infidelity and worse. slight, every difficulty he suffers comes out of anti-black prejudice, director-writer Joseph B. Vasquez makes Willie's complaints seem ple) are surprisingly flat-footed. Much of the showy stuff recalls episodes from mediocre television action series. And, unfortunately, Heard doesn't remind us of Cary Grant What comes to mind is William Hurt with intellectual pretensions.

SI he can raise himself up on the social ladder and pass as an Italian. Tom (Mario Joyner) is the most polished of the bunch, perhaps because as an aspiring actor he can at least pretend to have good sense. He appears to be offended by Vin-ny's sexism, but when Tom's ego is mauled by a wandering girlfriend, all he wants is to find another woman pronto, and he says so in the crudest terms possible. The one sensitive soul in the group is Johnny, played by John Leguizamo, who had a hit one-man show in New York called "Mambo Mouth," and is the film's most convincing and versatile actor. Working in a supermarket and wondering if he should apply for a college scholarship, he hangs with the homeboys at the same time as he disdains their coarseness and selfishness.

The film has an admirable energy, taking the audience on a one-night spree with the boys. They crash a party, get arrested for When Jack is reported killed in a car crash, Adrienne discovers, worse yet, that Jack isn't who she thought he was. Without giving away too much of a story that becomes increasingly easy to predict as the plot advances, it can be said that what starts out as a potentially intricate psychological thriller sinks into a pedestrian and familiar chase at the end. Still, director Damian Harris (son of Richard) has infused the film with a bracing rhythm. Where believability falters, dramatic cinematic swoops rush in.

He knows how to make the most of a close-up of an onlooking eye, although some of his attempts to stop audience hearts (appearances of nefarious types behind the shoulder of unsuspecting characters, for exam 'Deceived blatantly comical Willie (Doug E. Doug) is an unemployed professional leach who refuses to look for jobs, even at the risk of losing his welfare payments. "It's cause I'm black, right?" he asks the fed up black social worker who issues his final warning. "No, it's because you're a bum," she corrects. "If I was white you'd call me an eccentric." "No," she explains, "then I'd call you a white bum." The other characters are equally quirky, and for the most part, equally grating.

Fernando (Nestor Serrano) is Puerto Rican but insists his friend call him Vinny so 'Hangin' With the Homeboys' CAST: Doug E. Doug, Mario Joyner, John Leguizamo, Nestor Serrano DIRECTOR-WRITER: Joseph B. Vasquez RATED: THEATERS: Vogue. UA the Movies (Colma) EVALUATION: CAST: Goldie Hawn, John Heard DIRECTOR: Damian Harris WRITERS: Mary Agnes Donoghue, Derek Saunders RATED: PG-13 THEATERS: Royal, Century Plaza EVALUATION:.