Kuffs

In the wake of his brother's death, 21-year-old George Kuffs (Slater) has inherited a San Francisco “Patrol Special” district. That's sort of a minor-league police force created to assist the actual SFPD when it comes to covering the smaller beats known as “districts.” Kuffs, who witnessed his brother's murder, immediately sets out to nail the guys responsible and win the hearts and minds of the merchants in his district, who naturally assume he's little more than a cocky punk kid with nothing on the ball (and, for most of the film, they're right). Slater plays his character exactly the way he's played most of his others, with that damn Jack Nicholson matching grin and eyebrow set, a wiseass through and through. You've got to wonder, after so many variations on this theme, if that's the way Slater is in real life. That aside, Kuffs isn't nearly as terrible as I had been led to believe. It's a lightweight little fluff of a film, but as such, it's not so bad. Even at his worst, Slater has an undeniable screen magnetism; he's the high school prankster/ne'er-do-well we always wanted to be but rarely were. Screenwriters Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon have come up with an interesting twist on the rookie cop genre, incorporating the as yet unexplored idea of San Francisco's Patrol Specials into their story line and thereby adding some desperately needed originality to what could have been an otherwise lackluster film. If you've never lived in S.F., then you've probably never heard of the Specials -- it's an interesting holdover from the days of the Barbary Coast, apparently. Jovovich, as Slater's on-again/off-again girlfriend, has the worst role here, acting solely as a support group for Slater's Kuffs when the going gets rough. That's too bad, really, because from the looks of things she could have been one of the highlights of the film. In all fairness, Kuffs isn't much more than a fairly unassuming star-vehicle for Slater, but it's nowhere near as awful as you might have been led to believe. Maybe someday Slater will get the script he's been looking for and we'll all see just how good he can be…