I do always enjoy seeing people from The Wire and Oz, however getting Whitlock Jr. The parade of familiar faces is distracting (Cusack, Jackson, Harris, Chappelle etc), although some are used well. Bassett and Hudson are excellent in their scenes – and it is not their fault that their scenes exist in a film different from the other scenes. Cannon is wholly unconvincing throughout, while Snipes' comedy gangster undercuts the grit of this part of the film. Parris is strong in the lead, but struggles to find a through-line across all her varying material. The starry cast doesn't help because even when they are really good, they are distracting by their fame, as well as the disjointed nature of their individual material. Instead I wanted it to be better – to be worthy of its subject matter and its better elements but this never came together, and I found it quite frustrating just how messy it was. Being kind, you could describe this wild energy as being enough to carry the viewer along, but I did not find this to be the case. The result is a film that feels so totally unfocused that it is really difficult to stay with it. The film touches on a lot of serious subjects, but at the same time it tries to involve comedy, musical numbers, sexual farce, and generally odd or misjudged attempts at comedy. I am really not sure what the vision for the film was, and what was told to the cast to draw in so many big names – but I'm guessing different things attracted them since so many of them appear to be in different films from the others. At this point I was intrigued by the style as well as the content but as the ideas grew the film really gets out of control. The opening credits suggest seriousness and grit this is an impression that continues even at the same time as it adds theatrical presentation to the delivery, and rhyming couplets to the dialogue. I knew little of this film when I sat to watch it, only that it was from Spike Lee, and I was open to whatever it chose to do.
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