What is it like to grow up as punk rocker in the 1980s in Salt Lake City, Utah, the most conservative city in the USA? SLC Punk! answers this question with style.

Writer/director James Merendino’s not-quite-autobiographical tale takes us into the mind of Stevo, a smart young man whose parents are carefully nudging him to go to law school, but whose mind is much more occupied with the injustices of the world and at home. He is also baffled and bitter that his yuppie parents chose to move from the cultural Mecca of the US, New York City, and raise him in the Mecca of Mormonism, Salt Lake City.

SLC Punk! is an underrated coming-of-age comedy-drama that grapples especially with the tension between constructive rebellion and futile lashing out. The punks of SLC Punk! know enough history to point out the contradictions in 1980s neoliberal prosperity (Stevo berates his Jewish dad for driving a German car), but they don’t know what to do about it and they can’t seem to picture a way out of their SLC rut. Instead, they revel in the seedy underbelly of the conservative American dream. They fight, fuck, and chase highs, until the lifestyle catches up to some of them and forces a reckoning. They have to find a way forward while still holding on to their ideals.

“Only posers die, you fucking idiot!”

SLC PUNK!
SLC PUNK!
USA 1998
Regi: James Merendino
Medv: Matthew Lillard, Michael Goorjian, Annabeth Gish, Jennifer Lien, Christopher McDonald
Spilletid: 98 min
Språk: Engelsk (engelsk tekst)
Aldersgrense: 15 år
Omtale: Mike Murphy

Trivia
Matthew Lillard was 28 when he starred as 18-year-old punk Stevo. Christopher McDonald, who played his father, was only 15 years older, at 43.