Rating: B-
Dir: Gregory Hatanaka
Star: Marquis Moodie, Charda Jameson, Nino Cimino, Heather Marie Zagone
This wasn’t what I expected, in a number of different ways. Given the poster below, and a synopsis of “A young drug dealer must decide to either embrace a life of crime or get out of it before it’s too late,” I was watching with a view to reviewing it over on GirlsWithGuns.org. Call me naive, but I was expecting the drug dealer to be the young woman holding a gun, front and centre. Nope. While she is in the movie, she is actually the girl-friend of the character in question, who may be found at the back on the left. She doesn’t even touch a gun over the entire course of the movie.
However, I’m not inclined to be upset by this outrageous false advertising, since I still quite enjoyed the film. It’s small-scale, but knows its limits, sticks within them, and doesn’t overreach itself. The protagonist is Byron (Moodie), who has basically been brought up by a friend of his father, Mickey (Cimino), and become part of Mickey’s various illegal enterprises, which range from loan-sharking through to drugs. His girlfriend, Venus (Jameson), isn’t too happy with this situation, especially after she discovers she is pregnant, and begs Byron to move to Colorado, away from the criminal lifestyle. Byron, however, has business to take care of, not just for Mickey, but against another pair of thugs with whom he has a serious beef.
It’s a simple plot, which does the job, and I’d probably rather more movies erred on this side of things. Not every gangster movie needs to The Godfather trilogy, with aspirations of being a sprawling epic. The main plus is probably the performances, in particular from Moodie and Cimino. The former has a sense of realism which you don’t often get from a young actor. It feels like Byron has been through a lot of things before the film starts, and that experience comes through the character. Cimino, meanwhile, is highly entertaining, and turns Mickey into almost a parody of the classic Italian gangster, all expansive gestures and F-bombs. He’s helped by Zagone as his long-suffering girlfriend Annette, who gives as good as she gets.
A couple of the others aren’t as effective, with Jameson in particular guilty of just saying lines, rather than delivering them. However, the positives outweigh the negatives, as we head towards a final resolution which, I have to admit, I didn’t see coming. I do have questions about the long-time tenability of the outcome, admittedly: Mickey might have a lot of explaining to do. Yet, it felt like the kind of scheme someone like him would come up with, and miraculously manage to pull off, one way or another. Director Hatanaka has a long career, mostly as a producer, and also directing things like Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance. A lot of these IMDb ratings start with a 3. This, however, is perfectly serviceable, and while unexpected, was a surprise in the right direction.