In the 1980s, there was a wave of teen vigilante films that explored right-wing patriotism in the United States, and filmmaker Albert Pyun’s Dangerously Close belongs to this specific niche of cinematic endeavors. A student at an elite high school finds out some of his colleagues have organized themselves into a secret order. They call themselves The Sentinels and what brings them together is a passionate desire to “cleanse” their schools from students they don’t find acceptable based on their political views or ethnicity. When one of their targets is found brutally murdered, The Sentinels continue violently pushing their agenda.
In an environment that hostile and dangerous that being different is more than enough to get you murdered, Dangerously Close tells an interesting story packed in an often overlooked B-movie project that failed to reach a wider audience, but just as the students portrayed in the picture, succeeded in forming a cult following. Written by Scott Fields, Marty Ross and John Stockwell, this is a violent thriller with nice esthetics and good roles played by John Stockwell and Carey Lowell. Its reputation and poor reception from the critics aside, it’s definitely worth checking out, especially if teen vigilante flicks are right up your alley.
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