“I don’t know what’s worse, being blown up in nuclear war or having a 7-11 on every corner.”

Justin’s rating: I can answer that. Nuclear war is worse. I feel that I shouldn’t have to clarify that.

Justin’s review: You’ll never pin me as a skateboarder or even a person who walks normally. I always thought skateboarding was cool from a distance the way that anyone who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s did, though. It was dangerous, rebellious, and a step up from BMX in terms of edgy sports. Plus, Marty McFly used one to lure people into piles of manure, and that seemed legit to me.

Gleaming the Cube is absolutely enthralled with skateboarding — the lingo, the outfits, and especially the attitude. Brian (Christian Slater) is the leader of a gang of teen skateboarders who want to show off for each other, do tricks in their neighbor’s empty pool, and push back against The Man.

But things get quite real when Brian’s adopted Vietnamese brother Vinh stumbles over a conspiracy in a charity that he works at and is killed for his discovery. Brian’s not buying the story that Vinh committed suicide, so he starts playing detective. With, y’know, skateboards.

And if skateboards can’t solve the problem, Tony Hawk driving a Pizza Hut truck certainly can! It’s pretty wild to see that this 1989 movie got him to help represent skater culture.

Gleaming the Cube actually got a whole bunch of high-profile young skateboarders (including the Z-Boys) to join Brian’s crew and pull of the many stunts throughout this flick. And those stunts are really well done, lending the film a sense of speed and style. Sure, it’s a tad ridiculous that this becomes the tool used against the bad guys, but it’s no more so than a group of kids using BMX to pedal an alien to his mothership.

I love going back to a young Christian Slater around the time he hit it big in stardom. There’s something about his smart-aleck nature and distinctive voice that makes him instantly endearing, although I kind of forget he exists when I’m not watching one of his films.

Slater shows a fair bit of vulnerability as a teen few people outside his circle respect, driven by his love for his adopted brother. He forms a slightly adversarial partnership with a detective, so his Brian keeps trying to prove himself as something other than a “screw-up.”

Culture barriers, conspiracies, and murder are a pretty complex backbone for what could’ve — maybe should’ve — been a fluffy sports flick. That’s where I get hung up on Gleaming the Cube. Skater culture, especially in its peak at the end of the ’80s, is fascinating enough to explore. But all of the crime drama pushes that to the back seat, so instead of focusing on what makes this subject unique, the filmmakers elected to push the same kind of bland detective stuff that we got so many other places this decade. It turns this into a very mixed bag with a pretty awesome ending — a kind of last gasp of the decade before everything got, well, even more crazy in cinema.

It was completely, thoroughly, and wholly OK. Gleaming the Cube’s not going to make me a skate fanatic, even if I had a death wish in my middle age, but it was certainly interesting to visit with it for a time. And I’ll be adding the title of this movie to my vocabulary when I want to punch up a conversation: “Well, I was going to get that report done, but I was off gleaming the cube, you know what I mean?”

Intermission!

• Skateboarding on an active airport runway is completely safe and radical
• Tony Hawk sticker!
• This movie is definitely shilling for Pizza Hut
• He’s very sue-happy
• Don’t act so surprised that strangling someone might kill them
• This bad guy is the worst tailer ever
• Buses give free rides to skateboarders
• He de-punkified himself!
• “I guess we all do unexpected things some times.”
• That’s a good heart-to-heart scene with his dad
• A little light arson via skateboard is always warranted
• What’s better, super skateboard or Pizza Hut truck?