Jawbreaker

It's possible that it won't be long before a real female Riggs appears routinely in films, blasting her lethal weapon into our faces, smashing skulls like Edward Norton in American History X, raping and pillaging like the best of the worst males.

And in real life the gun woman will appear in schools somewhere, just like a gun man, or in another Port Arthur, and then we'll know that real women have emerged and the world will then I suppose be twice as nasty because of it.

Jawbreaker is a film about a teen bitch who decides to play a trick on her tty and much nicer class mate. The bitch and her mates grab the girl from her bed, stuff a big lolly called a jawbreaker in her mouth and throw her in the boot of their car. The girl to their surprise chokes to death.

They cover the crime and stage a rape and murder. There is even a serious whiff of necrophilia.

Now all of this, for good or evil, is fairly standard fare these days, devised for the entertainment of our young adults. Set the shenanigans in a school yard, put the kids in flash cars (no good for these heroes to be poor!), and then throw in the snazzy youngish sound track (not! The Wiggles please) and then you might make some money in pictures.

The film maker, first timer Darren Stein, has tried to kid us that this is an exuberant mix of Heathers and Carrie but his expectations fall way, way, short of reality.

Jawbreaker every now and then makes an attempt to become a black comedy like the excellent Heathers but doesn't come even close. Misplaced mayhem is necessary for black comedy but these women are just plain nasty. Heathers threw in a good dose of good old fashioned nihilism and anarchy. No such luck with Jawbreaker.

As for the spoon bending horror that ran rampant in Carrie, well one satisfying lolly bulge in a neck does not a horror film make. And we certainly aren't likely to feel sorry for any of these young ladies as we did for poor Carrie!

Pam Grier of Jackie Brown makes a stilted appearance as a detective and Rose McGowan the chief nasty in Jawbreaker is in real life Marilyn Manson's girlfriend. And Marilyn Manson is apparently briefly in the film in a bar scene. But I didn't notice.