Who says high school shootings can't be fun?

SYNOPSIS:

“Way Over the Top”, a daring satire of 1980s America that is in its plot the very embodiment of its title.

In the beginning of the film we are transported back to fictional Shepherd Valley, California “sometime during the 1980s” and are introduced to one Ace Wilkins, a new student who comes crashing into the school in period fancy clothes, espadrilles shoes, and loquacious talk; drawing many immediately to his side, including a nice young student named Tobey, who is having trouble getting published his magnum opus... a screenplay. Ace takes Tobey under his wing, coaches him in the ways of Hollywood, and gives him inspiration to write a new story. Tobey is shocked by the tagline Ace gives him: a satire about a high school shooting.

Tobey reluctantly follows Ace’s advice and begins to write the screenplay, and seemingly Ace can do no wrong in his new environs until we find out his true identity: Ace is a drug kingpin. Placed in the US by a Colombian Cartel sleeper cell during his infancy, Ace grew up knowledgeable in all things, but especially sex, drugs, and violence. He soon clandestinely challenges the local drug pushers, intimidates them into submission, but along with way finds an unexpectedly different calling: to rid his school of oppressive bullying. Like Pablo Escobar, he seeks not to intimidate the poor and downtrodden of Shepherd High, but to befriend and enable them, knowing that is the most reliable way to keep the masses on his side.

What follows is a rip-roaring satirical adventure that sadly begins to mirror the script poor Tobey is trying to write, culminating (yes, you guessed it) at the end with a high school shootout. It is here where Ace and his enemies square off one last time to define the nature of what it means to be a drug dealer. Hardly glorifying the violence we see in our nation’s schools today, “Way Over the Top” instead asks us to look to our past, to see where the seeds of our current predicament may have been sown, and most importantly, where our cultural indifference to such violence first began.

WAY OVER THE TOP