Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Louden Swain, #1 champion wrestler in his Spokane, WA, high school, has a plan: he's going to drop 22 pounds and defeat a state all-star wrestler from another high school. Why? Because he's just turned 18 and figures the time has come to make his mark in life.

Louden's a bit of a geek, as all truly serious jocks are, living for sports and oblivious to too much else. When he's not training, he's not partying with the other kids; he's working as a room service waiter at a downtown hotel. While most other adolescents are wasting energy rebelling against their parents, Louden loves his auto mechanic dad (Ronny Cox) and they get along just fine. (His mother walked out on them many years ago.)

Louden seems to have it all - the good looks, the nice-guy attitude, independence of mind and the enthusiasm and vigor of a champion. But there is something about his combination of confusion, fear and excitement that brought me instantly back to the same point in my life. Movies have that miracle. That identification factor with a character that hooks you when an actor reveals that secret place inside of you that you thought nobody could see.

Vision Quest came out in early 1985 and was not much of a hit. Part of the problem was that awful title: it sounds like a cheesy, B-grade sci-fi thriller. But neither did the film get great word-of-mouth: Vision Quest diffuses its effectiveness with a great number of off-focus tangents, not particularly endearing the attention of the target audience who did see it.

Vision Quest was adapted from a novel and screenwriter Daryl Ponicsan seemed a little too careful about being faithful to the source material - a lot of the plot feels crammed together, like a condensed book report that tries to summarize every detail of a multi-character story in 3 paragraphs or less.

For instance, Louden drops by to see his dad one night at the used car sales lot where he works. A feisty girl named Carla (big-haired Linda Fiorentino, in her film debut) is there screaming at the sales person who sold her a "lemon" - she bought it to go to California and now it won't run. Louden's dad is (unjustly) fired for the incident but it's water-off-a-duck's-back for him: he takes Louden and Carla out to a diner. Carla's calmer now, so Louden gets the idea of letting her stay with them until her car gets fixed; Carla accepts. JUST LIKE THAT.

Unfortunately, that scene and some others play out very contrived because the screenwriter's machinations are too obvious - you seem him laboring to get the characters in the same "situation" so that what is "supposed" to happen (because it was like that in the book) will happen.

But what's important and endearing and unforgettable about this movie is Louden Swain, as realized by Matthew Modine. This was Modine's first starring role: he'd been seen a few months before supporting Nicholas Cage in Birdy and Mel Gibson and Diane Keaton in Mrs. Soffel but he looks younger in this film, leading me to believe it was shot before the films inwhich he first received attention.

Modine infuses Louden with particular, eccentric twists that make you instantly think of that popular loner in high school that everybody liked but didn't run with the pack. He works out his plan in his head, by himself, without any outside reasoning, and he won't let anyone sway him from it. (His coach and teammates think he's crazy, and Louden is impressionable enough to admit that maybe, just maybe, they are right - what does he really know at the age of 18, after all? But he still won't change his mind.) To drop the weight, he jogs around town in a shiny insulated silver jogging suit that makes him look like an astronaut - he's aware of how goofy he looks, but he doesn't care what anybody thinks. That's heroic bravery for a teenager!

Carla exists mainly to bring out Louden's sexual confusion. Fiorentino, though, has a tough assignment: she's supposed to be a tough, worldly girl with street smarts up the wazoo and yet she's supposed to remain totally unaware that Louden is ga-ga over her. Carla is written to think of Louden like her "brother or something" yet she freaks out when he eventually does make an advance on her, "stunned" that he would try something like that. It's not impossible to play this, but it takes the right combination of hip and innocence - and Fiorentino, with her flat voice and heavy-lidded gazes, is not the right actress for the part despite her many talents. (She's much more suited to the nasty lady she was born to play in Last Seduction.)

Louden's sexual confusion distracts him mightily: his goal of defeating the state champion wavers precariously. The feelings are bigger and more important than the "plan" he set out for himself. It's another BIG BELL OF RESONANCE - who among us did not find these 18-year-old rite-of-passage years so complicated that chucking it all often seemed like the only solution? Oh, adolescence! The immensity of those feelings! Modine's sensitive performance captures these pangs dead-on.

Harold Becker (The Onion Field, Sea of Love) directed this film with his usual simple, uncharismatic immediacy. This is exactly what the film needed - to let Louden and Modine have all the attention. The wrestling scenes, both in training and in competition, are shot with excitement and finesse: the camera is right in there, picking up the straining and the grunting and the slap of the boys' bodies ricochets when they are beaten on to the mats. Anybody making lists of the great all-time high school sports movies should not miss Vision Quest.

I wasn't on the wrestling team in high school; I was too busy geekin' behind a computer trying to find my voice as a writer. But like Louden, I had a plan - not much of a plan, but it was MY plan, and I stuck to it - and I had a terrible crush on someone I didn't know what to do about. Come to think of it, those basics haven't changed all that much since I was 18 - just the places and the faces. No wonder I'm still so attuned to Louden Swain's vibes, even after all these years.








Recommended: Yes