This is a bleak black film about how crack and other ills destroy the lives of people. We have a small boy who has to figure out how to survive with his sister and his parents; pre-op transsexual whose boyfriend is addicted; a young man with a wife and baby who works days as a security guard and nights in a bodega trying to get enough money to get out, and a gangbanger and his crew who run rough shod over everyone and each other in a crack fueled haze.
I began by saying that this is bleak and black and I mean it. The film begins with our gangbanger taking his girlfriend away from watching a street basketball game to show her something. Instead of showing her something he turns her over to his boys who brutally rape her and leave her crying in an alley. Its not a fun and happy film by any stretch of the imagination. It's not the sort of film that I would normally watch but the opening kind of floored me and I had to see where it was going. You would think it could only get better from there but it doesn't, we're on the fast track to hell as we watch as most things and people are broken.
Well acted, you like many of the "bad" people despite their actions, this film remains bearable thanks to the very good cast.
If there is any flaw in the film it's that its too clean. The film doesn't have a grittiness to it that speaks of the street. The film often has the feel of a Hollywood idea of the street and the poor. Its not that what happens doesn't ring true, it does, it just that things look dressed up. In a way it feels like people re-enacting events transpiring in the next room. The characters, the young boy and his sister most glaringly, seem to be playing dress up. The kids seem too well fed, the dirt on their faces too perfect. For me it put a distance between the actors and what was going on, some of the edge was taken off things.
Then again maybe that's a good thing since this is still an uncomfortable movie no matter how you slice it.
A good little film, this should have been great. Regardless of good or bad this film with haunt you like a bad dream.
Worth a look if you like your slices of life black with a side of hopeless.
I began by saying that this is bleak and black and I mean it. The film begins with our gangbanger taking his girlfriend away from watching a street basketball game to show her something. Instead of showing her something he turns her over to his boys who brutally rape her and leave her crying in an alley. Its not a fun and happy film by any stretch of the imagination. It's not the sort of film that I would normally watch but the opening kind of floored me and I had to see where it was going. You would think it could only get better from there but it doesn't, we're on the fast track to hell as we watch as most things and people are broken.
Well acted, you like many of the "bad" people despite their actions, this film remains bearable thanks to the very good cast.
If there is any flaw in the film it's that its too clean. The film doesn't have a grittiness to it that speaks of the street. The film often has the feel of a Hollywood idea of the street and the poor. Its not that what happens doesn't ring true, it does, it just that things look dressed up. In a way it feels like people re-enacting events transpiring in the next room. The characters, the young boy and his sister most glaringly, seem to be playing dress up. The kids seem too well fed, the dirt on their faces too perfect. For me it put a distance between the actors and what was going on, some of the edge was taken off things.
Then again maybe that's a good thing since this is still an uncomfortable movie no matter how you slice it.
A good little film, this should have been great. Regardless of good or bad this film with haunt you like a bad dream.
Worth a look if you like your slices of life black with a side of hopeless.