Posts Tagged ‘John Singleton’

2 Fast 2 Furious

Friday, July 7th, 2006

I recently saw and enjoyed THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS PRESENTS TOKYO DRIFT, part 3 in the FAST AND THE FURIOUS saga. And it reminded me that it was time I got around to seeing part 2. This one is closer to a straightup sequel. They couldn’t get Vin Diesel to return so instead they just follow Paul Walker’s character.

I know that probaly all of you have seen that first movie over a thousand times and have it memorized backwards, forwards and sideways, but in case there is one person out there who may not be familiar with the story, I want to help that one person out. In the first movie, Paul Walker is a new street racer in town who befriends Vin Diesel, who is the charismatic leader of a team of racers, but is also leading a gang of armed robbers or a chop shop or arms dealers or kidnappers or something. And a ways into the movie you find out that Paul is actually an undercover cop trying to bust Vin. But throughout the movie they have a special sort of male bonding – the type that happens between an undercover cop and his mark, or between two dudes obsessed with cars – so at the end Paul purposely lets Vin escape.

At the beginning of part 2 we learn that Paul is in Miami, where he is the king of underground street racing. And he’s a fugitive because of letting Vin go. I guess he travelled around helping people and racing cars, like the A-Team with a car instead of a van. But after the spectacular opening race he gets caught by the pigs. It turns out the FBI has a plan for him: if he will go undercover as a driver for this drug kingpin guy, he can get a full pardon. The guy they offer as a partner doesn’t know shit about cars, so he convinces them instead to let him use his childhood friend who now hates him because he blames him for his jail time, Tyrese. Tyrese is not a cop and they would also have to give him a pardon, so it is a good deal I guess, somehow. (more…)

3 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Action, Reviews | 12 Comments »

Four Brothers

Sunday, August 21st, 2005

A saintly old white lady gets killed during a liquor store robbery in Detroit. She has four adopted sons that return to town for her funeral – Mark Wahlberg from Boogie Nights, Andre Benjamin from Be Cool, Tyrese from Baby Boy, and… some kid in a leather jacket. See, this dead lady was some kind of pillar of the community, bein a grandma to all the disadvantaged kids in the neighborhood, bringing people free turkeys on thanksgiving, teaching important moral lessons and what not. But these four kids, these were the worst motherfuckers anybody ever saw… out of all the kids she helped, these were the only little shits she couldn’t get anybody to adopt, because they were too bad. The dirty dozen of juvenile delinquents. Except there’s only four of them, I think I mentioned that already but I don’t want anybody to get confused. The dirty four brothers.

So now Motown’s Most Infamous are back in the neighborhood like blaxploitation stars, and somebody out there killed their mom, and they aren’t quite as forgiving as she is so holy shit is somebody gonna have all hell brought down on them, in my opinion.

If that isn’t a good hook, I don’t know what is, but unfortunately Mr. John Singleton doesn’t really hang too much meat on it. This isn’t a bad movie, it’s a mediocre one, which is probaly worse. The cast is good, there’s some good moments, I like the basic outline, but it just doesn’t fly.

One big mistake, they didn’t do enough with the problem child angle. We hear alot about how these were the baddest kids on the block, but we pretty much have to take their word for it. Wahlberg is pretty mean and grizzled, has apparently lived a life of crime, etc. He passes the test. Tyrese has muscles, but he’s mostly a fuckup like he gets into trouble screwin somebody else’s girlfriend and that kind of garbage. Not one of the top four worst kids in Detroit. Benjamin isn’t a bad guy at all, he’s a family man with a conscience, and even Terence Howard, the cop who explains to us the premise of the 4 brothers at the beginning, admits he’s an okay guy. And then the kid in the leather jacket, they just tell us that something bad happened to him when he was little, and the brothers pick on him and call him a fag all the time. So he’s a bad motherfucker, I guess. (more…)

Only 1 person likes this post. Kinda sad.
Unlike

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 1 Comment »

Baby Boy

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Baby Boy is the underrated new picture by young Johnny Singleton, the director of Shaft 2K who was also the youngest fella to ever get nominated for a best director oscar. That was for Boyz N the Hood, and what makes Baby Boy interesting is that it is a companion piece to that movie, telling the story of thugs and gangstas in South Central Los Angeles. But now Singleton is older and he sees things differently. So instead of portraying these thugs as a menace to society, he portrays them as a bunch of fucking babies who need their mommies.

The main character is Jody, who is played by a model named Tyrese. He is bald and muscled, like what Singleton wishes he looked like. But he drives his girlfriend’s car or, when necessary, rides a bike. And he lives with his mom, even though he has two different babies from two different mamas.

The story is about Jody trying to grow up and move out of his mom’s house. But all he can figure out to do is steal a bunch of dresses and sell them. And then beat up some kids who steal his beer.

I don’t know much about modeling so who the fuck knows if tyrese is good at that, but I’ll tell you this. He’s real good in this role. And I like the character because he’s VERY flawed, but this tyrese is charismatic enough to make you keep rooting for him. to some extent.

There are sort of two villains in the piece. The best one is the great Ving Rhames, who steals the movie as Jody’s mom’s ex-con boyfriend. He’s a tattooed motherfucker who threatens Jody by moving in, inventing new sex moves with his mom, and walking around the house naked. He’s a thug who smokes cigars and dresses up like an old school gangster. Like he could be one of those bank robbing LA cops that worked for Death Row Records and killed those two rappers back in the ’90s. He’s a real scary character but he’s also sort of the yoda character. He has the funniest scenes in the movie and also the most powerful. In short, he is Ving Rhames. (more…)

Only 1 person likes this post. Kinda sad.
Unlike

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews, Romance | 1 Comment »

Shaft (2000)

Friday, June 16th, 2000

Going in I didn’t know WHAT to expect. A remake? A sequel? The ads made it look silly and ridiculous. Like not so much a remake as a big screen addaptation of the Shaft theme song.

But then I never thought Shaft was the god damn word of the lord or anything. He’s a cool character and I like his work and what he accomplishes with the ladies but I never thought his pictures had the same emotional depth of Superfly or The Mack or Blacula. Maybe it’s because those are movies about outlaws instead of a law enforcement figure like a private eye. Or maybe not. I think you kind of had to be black at that time to know what it meant to finally see a black James Bond character like John Shaft. But at the time, just as now, I was a white man.

So I was open to some noodling and fiddling with the Shaft character, but to my surprise it is a surprisingly faithful update with hardly any shenanigans. It is a pretty serious story of Shaft trying to catch a racist murderer rich boy bail jumper played by none other than the American Psycho from the film American Psycho starring Patrick Bateman. The tone of the picture is a very strange and enjoyable cross between gritty police stories like Clockers and the Homicide television program and the more corny ’70s tv shows like CHiPs. So the violent scenes are grim and disturbing but you still got a foot chase or two with Shaft chasing a dude up and down fire escapes fueled only by wah wah guitars.

The reason I like this picture is mostly the ’70s feel. The only Isaac Hayes song they used is the main theme, but the score is all extrapolated from the style of that piece. And Shaft is a character with a combination of qualities you just don’t see all at once anymore. He is the guy who always looks cool, always knows how to trick somebody or kick somebody’s ass something good, is single and open to sharing his charms with many ladies, and who also is sensitive and supportive to the point of sainthood. During the court room scene, he is sitting behind the mother of the victim, rubbing her shoulders and telling her everything is gonna be okay. You almost think he is a guardian angel. (more…)

Unlike

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »