Rebel

Year releasted: 1970

by Keith Phipps
May 31st, 2000

The late '60s marked a time of chaos and disillusionment for the American protest movement: The increasingly action-oriented protests of its more radical factions occasionally resulted in the violence to which it was so adamantly opposed. And who better to remind a troubled nation of the high stakes on both sides than Sylvester Stallone, in a rare pre-Rocky/post-Party At Kitty And Stud's starring role? In Rebel (a.k.a. No Place To Hide), Stallone plays Jerry Savage, a former campus radical who falls in with the New York faction of a Weather Underground-like organization determined to call attention to a company manufacturing metal cages for foreign prisoners by blowing it up. All the while, he and his colleagues remain unaware of a traitor who reports their activities to the police and the FBI--both of which, in a characteristic break with realism, are run by middle-aged black men. After befriending a pretty, flaxen-haired commune-dweller (Rebecca Grimes), Stallone begins to question his involvement with the group, as well as his relationship with a perpetually scowling, white-afro-sporting radical and belly-dancing aficionado. "Haven't you ever seen auras, or the energy of colors, or felt the silence between the rustling of the trees?," Grimes asks. Though he seems intrigued by the question, Stallone leaves her after a heated, if badly enunciated, debate over the best course of political action. Returning to New York, he takes up with his radical friends, participating in the bombing until realizing he's been set up. Fleeing, complete with the bomb, to rejoin his country love, he learns firsthand that anti-war movements can be harmful to children, peace-loving hippies, and other living things.