My review was written in April 1989 after a screening on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
"Riding the Edge" is a weak entry in the current cycle of youth wish-fulfillment films, wherein a boy ventures overseas to rescue his dad. Its soft-R rating aims it mainly for home video and pay-tv usage.
Raphael Sbarge is a young motocross enthusiast whose chopper skills come in handy when terrorists kidnap his scientist dad (Lyman Ward) in North Africa and demand that the boy act as courier. Rather dubious plot peg has a little arguing against putting the kid in danger (mostly by Sbarge's mom Brooke Bundy), followed by Sbarge heading to the Middle East with full government and corporate approval.
He's delivering a secret microprocessor to the terrorist in exchange for springing daddy. Along the way he teams up with a beautiful U. S. not-so-secret agent (Catherine Mary Stewart), a bit young for an older woman role) and a cute Arab princeling (Benny Bruchim).
Pale adventure in the vein of "Iron Eagle" and "The Rescue" mixes Israeli and California locations atmospherically but is sunk by dumb dialog and flat direction. Climax set at a vast dam (looking more like Hoover than Aswan) is rousing, however.
Acting is so-so, with Sbarge overly emphatic and Stewart once again wasted. Erstwhile director Michael Sarne ("Myra Breckinridge") is unconvincing in his acting with fake German accent as an Eastern European baddie, and pic's helmer James Fargo pops up as the leader of the terrorists. Tech credits are adequate.
