Susan Seidelman seems to have had a decent career with a few top notch credits under her belt. I'm certainly glad she bounced back from this film which seems to have its admirers. I'm not one of them.

I've seen better acting in high school plays than I did in Smithereens. The plot such as it is involved young Susan Berman who is ambitious to make it in the world of music and is willing to do just about anything to get there. She even rejects the sincere advances of a young artist who is living out of his van off the East River played by Brad Rijn.

Young Mr. Rijn contributes the worst performance in the film, in fact one of the worst acting jobs I've seen in a long time. No wonder he's not gone anywhere.

I will say that Seidelman's eye for the camera is a good one in capturing the familiar East Village locations where the film was mostly shot. But her work with her live performers didn't measure up. I'm not sure she had that much raw material to work with.

Look fast and you'll see a very young Christopher Noth before Law and Order and Sex in the City as a street hustler.

If you like punk rock, you might sit through this for the soundtrack. I'll stick to Bing Crosby.

The movie starts with Wren stealing a pair of outrageous sunglasses from a lady in the NYC subway. She's putting up flyers promoting herself in the hopes of gaining a foothold in the punk scene. She sees herself as an upstart promoter. She schemes and scrape but mostly she's at the bottom of the barrel. The punk scene is moving to L.A. while NY music is advancing in other genres. Paul is infatuated the first moment he sees her in the subway. He tries to date her but she treats him poorly. She gets locked out of her apartment after failing to pay the rent. While on a date with Paul, she meets Eric from a defunct one-hit-wonder punk band Smithereens.

This starts well as a fascinating look into a time and a place. Wren is an interesting character although Paul is a bit too pathetic. It's too bad that neither actors are terribly charismatic. It's a small indie and it may be asking too much to discover some future star. This is a life slowly grinding downwards. It's a bit tiring to see her life go to naught as nothing ever seems to work. It's a worthy first feature from indie director Susan Seidelman.

Ambitious, but aimless, amoral, abrasive and opportunistic Jersey girl hustler Wren (winningly played with considerable spunky panache by Susan Berman) tries desperately to break into the lower Manhattan music scene as a punk rock band manager, but since she has neither talent nor connections this proves to be a most difficult task to accomplish. While crashing around the city Wren makes the acquaintance of both Paul (a likable turn by Brad Rinn, who later starred in "Perfect Strangers" and "Special Effects" for Larry Cohen),a nice guy struggling artist who lives in his rundown jalopy of a van and Eric (a commendably fearless performance by punk icon Richard Hell of the Voidoids),a cocky, stuck-up narcissistic leech of a musician who ruthlessly uses other people to keep himself afloat.

Directed with tremendously exciting style, verve and assurance by Susan Seidelman (who went on to helm "Desperately Seeking Susan" and several episodes of "Sex and the City"),this compellingly raw, gritty and funky little indie drama gem offers a very harsh, nightmarish and unflattering depiction of the East Village, pungently capturing the tart'n'tangy stench of urban squalor and despair in an unflinchingly stark and unsentimental manner (Seidelman's admirably obdurate refusal to either whitewash or romanticize the nastier aspects of the East Village punk culture is one of the movie's most substantial assets). The barbed, incisive script by Ron Nyswaner and Peter Askin relates the grim story in an engrossingly sharp, direct and brutally honest way, pulling no punches throughout and concluding things on a hauntingly downbeat note. Chirine El Khadem's rough, grainy, but dynamic and evocative cinematography, a first-rate thrashy'n'throbbing rock score by the Feelies, the often witty dialogue (favorite line: "Everyone's a little weird these days -- it's normal"),and the snappy editing further galvanize this thrillingly energetic film. An authentically scrappy and vibrant time capsule of the early 80's East Village bohemian punk alternative artistic fringe, "Smithereens" gets my highest possible recommendation.