This Forgotten Charlie Sheen Flop Is Shockingly Similar To The Fast And The Furious

Charlie Sheen had a busy, perplexing 1986. At the outset of the year, he was a fresh-faced, second-tier Brat Packer who, given his family pedigree, was surely just paying his dues as a nice-guy jock in the Corey Haim showcase "Lucas." When he turned up as a juvenile delinquent who pitches police station woo to Jennifer Grey in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," no one was sure if this was a celebrity cameo or a legit paying gig for the not-yet-star. A few months later, he toplined the supernatural action flick "The Wraith," which did absolutely nothing for his career. In December, he starred in Oliver Stone's Vietnam War bulldozer "Platoon." While Sheen's wet-behind-the-ears Chris Taylor wasn't the film's most interesting character, he was an effective audience surrogate through whom we experienced the madness of that pointless conflict. He anchored that movie like the born star he seemed to be.

Sheen firmly established himself as an A-lister the following year as Bud Fox in Stone's "Wall Street," but, as in "Platoon," he was the surrogate who, in this case, set up an iconic, career-best performance from Michael Douglas. When would Sheen, who briefly showed off his darkly seductive side in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," get to strut his devilish stuff?

That opportunity actually arrived a few months before the release of "Wall Street," but the film, "No Man's Land," was in and out of theaters faster than you can say "Gigli." Sheen stars as a charismatic rich kid who's running a chop shop out of a Porsche dealership. Unbeknownst to him, he's let a cop (D.B. Sweeney) into his operation. The emotional stakes steadily rise as the two become good friends. The premise may be very similar to "The Fast and the Furious," but this film is a completely different animal.

Directed by television journeyman Peter Werner ("A Different World," "Justified"), the film looks slick thanks to cinematographer Hiro Narita ("Never Cry Wolf," "The Rocketeer"), but the car chases look like they were lifted from a random episode of "Spencer for Hire." Amazingly, for a film about stealing Porsches and other luxury sports cars, this isn't a fatal flaw.

"No Man's Land" works as a crime thriller thanks to a nuanced screenplay by a pre-"Law & Order" Dick Wolf. Sheen's a killer, but watching him find a kindred, car-crazed spirit in Sweeney's gearhead cop gets us unexpectedly invested in the third-act payoff, where everything inevitably comes to a head. There's a bit of Michael Mann here, which is not something you can say about any of "The Fast and the Furious" movies.

I wouldn't call "No Man's Land" a forgotten gem (though prominent critics like Roger Ebert and Kevin Thomas dug it), but it doesn't belong in the scrap heap of cheesy '80s cinema. It's a smart-enough B-movie that shows what Sheen could've done had he cared more about his craft. This shouldn't be one of his best serious performances (his comedy work prior to getting fired from "Two and a Half Men" was first rate), but outside of "Platoon," "Wall Street," and "Eight Men Out," it's hard to find anything else in its class.