Lee Drysdale's Leather Jackets is a cliché-ridden and improbable crime drama set in the same temporal netherworld as Walter Hill's Streets of Fire, but lacking that film's goofy charm. Leather-jacketed gang members battle Vietnamese thugs, and a dimwitted former gang member (D.B. Sweeney as Mickey) who's cleaned up his act has his dreams of a simple, honest life destroyed by past loyalties and his love for a woman with a past (Bridget Fonda as Claudi). Cary Elwes plays Dobbs, Mickey's former friend/rival/corruptor. Drysdale is working with a good cast including Jon Polito (of Miller's Crossing) and Chris Penn, who both chew up the scenery to little effect, as well as James LeGros, who is utterly wasted in a tiny part. Sweeney and Elwes essentially play dumb gang movie archetypes, though Elwes, in the showier role, does manage a few amusing moments, as when he points a gun at a thug's head, talks trash, and pulls the trigger, only to find it isn't loaded. "That's funny," he quips. Fonda does what she can, trying to bring a little life to her role as a "bad girl" who makes no apologies for her sexually active past, but wants to move on. The Vietnamese gangsters are essentially racial stereotypes and the overdone score grates. The film fully earns its straight-to-video fate.