River's Edge, about the impact, or lack thereof, a teenage girl's murder has on her community, is exploitative yet reserved, savage yet genteel. Tim Hunter, by way of casting scenery-termite Crispin Glover and drowsy Keanu Reeves as best friends, announces his contradictory impulses at the starting gate, but that doesn't mean his film is even-handed. As embodied by two ex-hippie characters that reign superior, River's Edge is ultimately self-righteous about grief (youth aren't above it, they just don't understand it, you see), and its attitude towards drug and alcohol abuse gradually becomes as flippant as that of the users portrayed by Reeves and Dennis Hopper (warming up for--or is that coming down from?--Blue Velvet).

That said, the film is at times effective, and a scattering of images and scenes (the nude body that tarnishes an idyllic shoreline, the sickening robbery of a home-dug grave) are unshakable. Acting, dialogue ("You food-eater motherfucker!"), visuals, and soundtrack are all first-rate. What I think is that Neil Jimenez's script begged another pass through the word processor--it's immediate, to be sure, but also disturbing for the wrong reason: glibness. (MGM lists the following "cinema fact" on the back of the DVD: "Director Tim Hunter said he essentially filmed screenwriter Neal Jimenez' first-draft screenplay 'right off the page, with minor trims.'")

Larry Clark's directorial debut Kids is more authentic than River's Edge, though it, too, is undone by a questionable agenda. A fictitious, narrative film, Kids parallels the exploits of self-proclaimed "virgin surgeon" Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) and Jennie (sparkling Chloe Sevigny), a girl he probably infected with HIV. She is combing New York City to deliver this news to him, and the plot takes on a level of suspense as Telly smooth-talks new victims into bed. Clark, a career photographer, is unflinching in his observations of Telly, Telly's gang, and their female counterparts (Jennie's circle relishes their burgeoning sex appeal); the camera catches all the nihilistic behaviour it can, and to Clark's repute, ninety-nine percent of it seems real--one doesn't expect to see these non-archetypal skater punks outside the documentary realm. But what's it all about, Larry? Kids is merely a procession of nihilism, and its audience is limited: those it's good for shun moralizing and the rest of us already know how awful life is in urban areas these days. It's like a wake-up call to the dangers of cliff diving.

By contrast, Crime + Punishment in Suburbia is pointless and worthless, and it inadvertently proves how good Clark is with actors, for its lead, Vincent Kartheiser, previously appeared in Clark's second feature, Another Day in Paradise, and there he was mediocre. Here, as a crackhead-photographer-stalker-zealot, he campaigns for a spot in Roget's under "abysmal"; co-star Monica Keena ("Dawson's Creek"'s resident bitch Abby), his love interest, is marginally better. The only barnburner in the cast is Shaft's Jeffrey Wright, in an infinitesimal role as the bartender boyfriend of Keena's wrongly death row-bound mom (Ellen Barkin). In tailoring nineteenth-century Russian literature to fit a modern, collegiate setting, Dostoyevsky's pessimism translates to poseur brooding; I'd rather see, as my brother helped make for an English class assignment, a movie in which Dostoyevsky himself tours suburbia. Rob Schmidt's direction stylizes the most genuine exchanges into MTV oblivion--God help us if his lens of choice, one that blurs out all but the most specific area of the frame, becomes a fad. A waste of perfectly good Depeche Mode music.

If only Charles Bronson's Paul Kersey had been woven into the fold to pop a cap in Kartheiser's smirky little ass. Not that I'm celebrating the pro-vigilante rationale of Death Wish, but here's a film that's an unqualified guilty pleasure on the order of first-person shooters like "Doom" and "Quake". Mild-mannered architect Kersey changes his "bleeding heart" tune when his apartment is invaded by hoodlums who leave his wife dead and his daughter too traumatized to speak. A business trip to Arizona (Death Wish's best sequence) introduces Kersey to a world ruled by peace because of relaxed gun control policies. (NRA lobbyists have listened close; practically everything Kersey is told about the gun's harmless status as "just another tool" Charlton Heston has repeated in speeches.) When Kersey returns home to big, bad New York City, he's in a new frame of mind, ready to wage a one-man war on muggers and gangbangers. And wouldn't you know it, with his help, the crime rate goes down!

Why Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is praised in the same breath that Death Wish receives revile has a lot to do with the former's status as a piece of art and the latter's status as a piece of pop. They're both grim fairy tales and neither is all that critical of its antihero's ideologies. Death Wish is so lax, in fact, that it leaves a hairy-tongue aftertaste, and the makings of its agenda are laughably sadistic: knowing what was in store for them after we meet Paul and his wife during their vacation in beatific Hawaii--marvelling at how much in love they still are after X years of marriage--I half-expected to see a box of puppies and an encroaching steamroller. Michael Winner's Death Wish is a cheap thrills antidote to those films that pussyfoot around 'the delinquent problem.'

Out of these four DVDs, the MGM releases--River's Edge and Crime + Punishment in Suburbia--fare best. 1.85:1 anamorphic, each, they boast clean prints and good soundtracks. C+PiS has a significant advantage, obviously, given its recency; actually, this may be the finest MGM disc I've ever witnessed. With its spotless image and pummelling 5.1 Dolby Digital mix (River's Edge is only 2.0 mono), I'd probably subject myself to this tripe movie again just to marvel at its DVD's technical glory. A full-frame transfer is included on the flipside, in addition to an unlisted commentary track with Schmidt and Michael Ironside, who says he jumped at the chance to play against type as a henpecked husband--I doubt viewers will share this perception of his brutish, drunkard stepfather character.

Kids and Death Wish, available from Trimark and Paramount, respectively, sport poor 1.85:1 transfers and trailers as their lone supplements. They both suffer from oversaturation of an initially muted palette and grain that resembles video noise. Death Wish, due to age, has a better excuse, and at least it's 16x9-enhanced. Kids, in Dolby Surround, has the edge over the tinny Death Wish in the audio department; be warned that now and again, its dialogue is muffled by background noise--there likely wasn't any post-synch involved, for that vérité flavour.

Parting thought: don't bother with any of these DVDs unless the film in question tickles your fancy.-Bill Chambers