Los Angeles firefighter Lyle Wilder (Charlie Sheen) having recently been honored for saving an infant from a blazing meth house on the surface is a respectable hero, but underneath the heroic façade Wilder conceals a dark abusive nature justified by his own twisted interpretation and justification of religious doctrine, which has left him divorced and estranged from his ex-wife and son due to a restraining order. Wilder has regular feuds with his neighbors the Bravertons consisting of husband Reese (David Andrews), wife Catherine (Mare Winningham) and their two children Zach and Marcie (Noah Fleiss and Chelsea Russo respectively). Wilder voices his annoyance at petty grievances such as parked cars, noises of children playing, or various other sources and uses these gripes as justification for increasingly abusive behavior on the Braverton's personal and professional and eventually to more lethal actions.
One of the final films released by JVC backed Largo Entertainment before they folded in 1999, Bad Day on the Block (also known as Under Pressure) was one of many psychological thriller/home invasion/stalker films that populated much of the 90s with the success of films such as Fatal Attraction, Single White Female, or The Hand that Rocks the Cradle sparking a glut of these types of movies covering every kind of stalker you can imagine and then some. While Bad Day on the Block was intended for a theatrical release, Largo's position at the time lead to distribution problems with their final films with both Bad Day on the Block and Finding Graceland going direct-to-video and Grey Owl getting only a limited run. Even if Bad Day on the Block had been released theatrically, it probably wouldn't have done all that well thanks to the movie's rather clumsy "product-like" nature that leaves the film hanging together pretty poorly.
I will say that Charlie Sheen is intimidating in the role of Lyle Wilder with his authoritative voice and intense looking eyes make him well suited for this type of unhinged psychopath. The role doesn't have all that much depth to it with Sheen mostly called upon to quote bible verses about "spare the rod spoil the child" and while he can come across as intimidating, later scenes where he goes to almost boogeyman like extremes of hiding in closets make the character unintentionally hilarious. Outside of Sheen most of the cast are pretty much non-entities with the Bravertons basically being a typical family with nothing all that much distinguishing them making them proxies for the audience to position themselves in rather than actual characters, and the two cops who deal with the feuds between the Bravertons and Wilder are pretty stupid and useless even by the standards of this kind of movie, though John Ratzenberger did give me a laugh at how his cop character spells out the motivation behind Wilder's crazed behavior which felt like an admission that the movie didn't really create much resonance for that character. We then come to a ludicrous climax involving roleplay and Russian Roulette that brings the movie to levels both stupid and needlessly meanspirited while having the audacity to try and milk sympathy for Wilder before the end.
Bad Day on the Block (aka Under Pressure) is lazy and derivative. It's basically a retread of Largo Entertainment's Unlawful Entry from earlier in the 90s but replace an obsessive cop with an obsessive firefighter. Even by the standards of a home invasion thriller the characters and script are pretty stupid with some massive logical leaps and face palm moments. If you're starved for a cheap laugh with friends you'll get your money's worth, but if you're looking for a thriller that hangs together look elsewhere.
