(1995) New Jersey Drive
CRIME DRAMA
During the 80's, car theft was a major problem in New Jersey with the film focusing on radical decisions made by a spontaneous 16 or 17 year old youth, Jason, who steals cars for the purpose of joy riding and perhaps to make money, like his friend Midget. When at the same time his mother's trying to set him off straight! After the recognition of John Singleton's 1991 "Boyz In The Hood", a film that was even nominated for an Oscar, more African American coming-of-age themes started to come out, that have similar plots but slightly different, these newer versions often contain more swearing, cursing, and slang, older viewers are incapable to understand, but an imitation of what used to happened in real life. In this film, we get a lot of "n" this and "n" that, and the expression "you know what I'm sayin'" after a typical discussion among young African American youths. But despite being quite raw, and a mirror reflection about what used to happen and how they dealt with it, the characters can become unrelatable, mocking the expression, ' If you break the crime, you do the time'. To get my point, the central people are arrested several times for a lot of petty crimes, the criminal activities are long and extensive, and the film doesn't elaborate too much on it, for they are underage, showing their spontaneous, rather radical responses, mostly towards the police, meaning that a lot of the stuff that this community used to do back then, would not unlikely to get away with it as of right now, such as smart aleck responses to the police and police taunting, just because the teenagers are somewhat underage can still be punished, making the overall experience of the film very outdated! The social commentary is absent, but quite obvious which says that if parents don't like the way kids talk and act like they're portrayed in this film, then why isn't the government doing anything about it, put more money to the schools that need it than the schools that can earn it! Anyways, from my standpoint, the first half of the film is like a 'Grand Theft Auto' game, whereas if the car thieves are going to get caught, they would run and hide away from the police and the police would eventually give up chase! The second half is like another "Boyz in the Hood", whereas, it would have to cost a friend's life to open his eyes, and the acting is exceptional, which is not that hard to do if you're a young tough African American street thug who can speak natural slang! This kind of lifestyle, this movie portray African Americans in New Jersey, USA may be labelled as stereotypical- you be the judge.
During the 80's, car theft was a major problem in New Jersey with the film focusing on radical decisions made by a spontaneous 16 or 17 year old youth, Jason, who steals cars for the purpose of joy riding and perhaps to make money, like his friend Midget. When at the same time his mother's trying to set him off straight! After the recognition of John Singleton's 1991 "Boyz In The Hood", a film that was even nominated for an Oscar, more African American coming-of-age themes started to come out, that have similar plots but slightly different, these newer versions often contain more swearing, cursing, and slang, older viewers are incapable to understand, but an imitation of what used to happened in real life. In this film, we get a lot of "n" this and "n" that, and the expression "you know what I'm sayin'" after a typical discussion among young African American youths. But despite being quite raw, and a mirror reflection about what used to happen and how they dealt with it, the characters can become unrelatable, mocking the expression, ' If you break the crime, you do the time'. To get my point, the central people are arrested several times for a lot of petty crimes, the criminal activities are long and extensive, and the film doesn't elaborate too much on it, for they are underage, showing their spontaneous, rather radical responses, mostly towards the police, meaning that a lot of the stuff that this community used to do back then, would not unlikely to get away with it as of right now, such as smart aleck responses to the police and police taunting, just because the teenagers are somewhat underage can still be punished, making the overall experience of the film very outdated! The social commentary is absent, but quite obvious which says that if parents don't like the way kids talk and act like they're portrayed in this film, then why isn't the government doing anything about it, put more money to the schools that need it than the schools that can earn it! Anyways, from my standpoint, the first half of the film is like a 'Grand Theft Auto' game, whereas if the car thieves are going to get caught, they would run and hide away from the police and the police would eventually give up chase! The second half is like another "Boyz in the Hood", whereas, it would have to cost a friend's life to open his eyes, and the acting is exceptional, which is not that hard to do if you're a young tough African American street thug who can speak natural slang! This kind of lifestyle, this movie portray African Americans in New Jersey, USA may be labelled as stereotypical- you be the judge.