“I plan on going to Harvard in the fall. Not Lebanon.”

Drake’s rating: This completes the “Keanu at QB” movie triptych

Drake’s review: What do you do when your school is menaced by the threat of break-ins and vandalism? Well, if you’re the principal of Santa Lucia High School, you give a fiery lecture to the senior student body and ask them to take the responsibility of policing the school upon themselves, which of course won’t go wrong at all.

I kid, because it goes off the rails almost immediately. Since the victims of the assaults perpetrated by the self-titled Brotherhood of Justice are not the most popular kids around, the crimes are at first ignored. But as things get worse and worse, with stabbings and Molotov cocktails replacing the initial shock-and-awe tactics utilized by the Brotherhood, they’re… well, they’re still pretty well ignored since the principal is quite willing to look the other way. He even stonewalls the police chief, who is increasingly unhappy about the rampant vigilantism that’s disrupting his sleepy little town.

Eventually, cracks form inside the Brotherhood itself, as some of its own members start to realize things are going too far. They’re hesitant to speak up, since they don’t want to end up on the gang’s bad side themselves, but this bunch of rotten apples just might get what’s coming to them if the one good egg in the bunch can only come to his senses.

Granted, I’m freely mixing and matching my metaphors here, but that’s just the sort of lazy thought process this flick produces.

Brotherhood of Justice was an ABC TV movie that in all honesty would have fallen through the cracks and never been heard from again, except for the fact that the young cast is chock full o’ future big-name actors. So who’s who here? Well, let’s take a look.

First off, we have Keanu Reeves as Derek, the leader of the preppy perpetrators. Derek is the school’s quarterback, captain of the team, a rich kid who is looked up to by everyone. The Brotherhood of Justice is his idea because he wants to clean up Santa Lucia and keep the high school free of undesirable elements. Things get out of hand for Derek pretty quickly, however, and while “undesirable elements” mean thieves and drug dealers to Derek, the other Brotherhood members quickly take it to mean anyone with a skin tone darker than a bar of Ivory soap.

Then there’s Christie (Lori Loughlin, The New Kids), Derek’s working-class girlfriend, who is less bothered by random graffiti than she is by a squad of militant teens acting as self-appointed Judge Dredd wannabes acting out their action movie fantasies.

And let’s not forget Victor (Kiefer Sutherland, The Lost Boys), a friend and co-worker of Christie’s, whose blue-collar background earns him the instant side-eye from the Brotherhood — and then their full-on enmity when Christie wises up and unceremoniously dumps Derek and the teenage goons think Victor is to blame.

Add in supporting roles filled out by familiar faces such as Billy Zane and Darren Dalton, and Brotherhood of Justice is surprisingly strong in the acting department.

Still, that’s where the novelty of this one ends, because in practice this flick plays out pretty much like you’d expect it to. And if what you were expecting was something that could well have been “A very special episode of Beverly Hills 90210,” then you’re right on the money. This is essentially a teen soap opera, with few adults (and certainly no concerned parents) in sight.

If anyone deserves credit for Brotherhood of Justice having a little bit of staying power, it should be Jane Feinberg and her casting department who zeroed in on what would become some very famous Hollywood faces within the next few years. But past the cast involved, Brotherhood of Justice is a fairly forgettable 90 minutes.

Unless you’re just dying to see Keanu in a cashmere sweater, which might be the best reason to catch this flick.

Intermission!

• Brotherhood of Justice is based on a series of real events that had happened just two years prior in Fort Worth, Texas, when a band of Paschal High School students who called themselves the “Legion of Doom” went on a crime spree masquerading itself as vigilante justice. There were assaults, vandalism and a pipe bombing. And also the brandishing and use of firearms, but that’s just Texas. The real crimes also descended into the use of Nazi symbols and ideology, so that just increases the ick factor.
• The ringleaders of the Texas crimes were indicted on 30+ felony charges. Unsurprisingly, they received minimal jail time. We can only hope that the Santa Lucia judge threw the book at Billy Zane & Co.
• Attacking a party, shoving girls in dresses into the swimming pool, yet it’s still going to take Derek another hour of screen time to figure out he’s really one of the bad guys.
• They firebombed an MGB? Look, I’ve worked on those. It was going to be lucky to drive for six months without breaking down anyway.
• Billy Zane looks like he’s getting the tone down for his future psycho characters already. How did they ever make this guy the Phantom?
• For as homophobic as these guys are, when they go all Brotherhood they dress up like extras in a Frankie Goes to Hollywood video.