Great Moments in Film Hero Failure

Nobody's perfect, right? We all make mistakes, and I think that too many pictures show characters that are either error-prone to an insane degree or altogether too perfect.

And so we come to one of my favorite moments in film - in an ironic way. Gleaming the Cube is the 1980's Christian Slater skateboarding pic that makes everyone laugh at the ridiculous impenetrability of its title. There are some nice things about this pic: the acting isn't bad, especially for a teen movie, and I like that Slater's lead has a Vietnamese adoptive brother that he adores. I also love the silliness of our lead trying to fight major drug gangs with his deck.

I couldn't find many clips of this movie at all, and I didn't want to record anything myself, and so I had to rely on someone who made a full upload of GtC. Sorry! I didn't want to do it this way... In any case, follow this link which is set to the right time, or advance the vid below to 1h 22m 50s...

Slater watches his gf's house, where her corrupt father is starting to have second thoughts about the criminal enterprise he's joined; it's the same syndicate that killed Slater's brother, and now our hero wants to avenge his brother and get his love out safely. Let's watch:

F--king beautiful. Slater's role

• crashes through a plate glass window, knocking himself out
• which makes the father's partner panic and shoot the dad, before
• he takes the girlfriend hostage, dragging her through the hole left by the newly-destroyed glass.

A level of failure like that is just freaking magnificent, and I love it. If for nothing else, you must appreciate Gleaming the Cube for treating us to a moment like this...