By Robert Scucci
| Published
When Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater debuted in 1999, everybody in my middle school suddenly wanted to go pro. We were introduced to bands like Goldfinger and Primus, and the coolest kid on the block was whoever mastered the kickflip first. We all got sucked into it. That game did the same thing for skateboard sales that The Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 did for guitar sales. It was absolute pandemonium.
A little before my time, though, was 1989’s Gleaming the Cube, which stars a very young Christian Slater, who pals around with a very young Tony Hawk, and the effect was generally the same. The movie helped make skateboarding part of the cultural zeitgeist and is jam-packed with some pretty great skate tricks. Don’t believe me? Look at the credits. Rodney Mullen is a beast, and he was one of Slater’s skate doubles, handling the more intricate freestyle sequences.
Does the movie hold up, though? That depends on what you’re looking for in a movie. Gleaming the Cube gets by on its coming-of-age story arc, but it goes full ridiculous with its conspiracy plot, involving our protagonist’s brother getting murdered after uncovering a weapon-smuggling operation run through a corrupt charity organization.
But still, the plot takes a back seat to that sweet, sweet gnar and has no qualms about letting you know that Pizza Hut is, in fact, a real brand that sells you pizza that you can buy in real life.
It Ain’t Easy Growing Up Anywhere
Christian Slater is Brian in Gleaming the Cube, and he’s your typical directionless teenager. He gets in trouble with the cops for his wacky misadventures, which sometimes involve using a helicopter to scope out backyards for empty swimming pools that he can then carve up. His adopted brother, Vinh (Art Chudabala), is the favored teenager in his family, as he gets excellent grades and spends his time after school working for the Vietnamese Anti-Communist Relief Fund (VACRF).
One day, while auditing the VACRF’s shipping records, Vinh stumbles upon a massive discrepancy, resulting in his termination when he lets his boss, Colonel Trac (Le Tuan), know what he discovered. Undeterred, Vinh keeps snooping around, which results in his accidental murder. His death is staged to look like a suicide so the weapon-smuggling racket he was about to uncover doesn’t become part of the conversation.
Heartbroken by his brother’s death and suspicious of the surrounding circumstances, Brian befriends Vinh’s ex-girlfriend, Tina Trac (Min Luong), the Colonel’s daughter, who writes Brian off at first but warms up to his idea that Vinh wasn’t suicidal and that something far more sinister is being covered up.
Thanks to these traumatic, life-altering moments, Brian and his friends, Buddy (Tony Hawk), Yabbo (Max Perlich), and other similarly ridiculously named kids face off against the violent crooks. Using nothing but sheer force of will, and probably some super-fast bearings, they handle the situation the only way they know how: bombing down a hill alongside Buddy’s Pizza Hut truck (complete with Pizza Hut Roof) and getting into a high-speed chase.
Gleaming the Cube is impressive for its stunt coordination, whether you like skateboarding or not, and the film’s setup allows everything to escalate accordingly. What breaks the immersion, though, is just how corny the entire story is. None of it is believable, but when everybody’s tearing up the sidewalk and popping ollies with their late ’80s fashion choices brightening up the screen, it’s the kind of cheese fest any skateboarding fan could get behind.
As of this writing, Gleaming the Cube is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
