PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS (1990) is not a great ‘90s b-movie in the sense of being a thrilling piece of cinematic storytelling, but it stills stands as a type I enjoy due to many valuable qualities. First, there is its pure nineties-ness: its strongly held belief that rollerblading is really cool, Corey Haim’s skater hair, tying a flannel shirt around his waist, “Head Like a Hole” on the soundtrack. It being only the very beginning the nineties, there’s also a leftover-eighties-ness: lots of outdoor TVs, ritzy apartments with weird art made out of mannequins, some attempts at Verhoevenian satire in news reports.
Most notable, I think, there’s a political side to it that’s sadly right on the money for now. Not all of it; its idea of American collapse is that the government will borrow too much money, then force all the newly homeless people into camps, and also Harvard will be moved brick-by-brick to Hiroshima. (There used to be anxiety about Japanese business taking over America. See also: GUNG HO, DIE HARD.) But the part that’s sadly trenchant right now is that the title villains are like sci-fi Proud Boys: an anti-immigrant, white power gang with a uniform (beige trenchcoats and droog suspesnders). They’re controversial, yet they have strong enough ties to the government to buy a former naval shipyard, including its freighters! Some cops are trying to bust them but (spoiler) it’s actually for corrupt purposes. Oh yeah and they rollerblade around in a flock, synchronizing the waving of their arms to look menacing.
