Perfectly mediocre, insomuch as the virtues; an excellent cast & an interesting subject / historical period in this case, are balanced by corresponding flaws; the performances are either too much or too little & all the complicating contours of the man & his times are sanded down into generic 'Oscar bait' gimcrack.
Probably a decent enough intro to Trumbo & the Red Scare for the completely uninitiated, at least.
The dichotomy between Chico Del Vec reminiscing about Voletta Wallace yelling at him with her thick Jamaican accent when her & Biggie were kids & UCLA professor Dr. Todd Boyd waxing rhapsodic about the way Biggie would say "uh" tells the tale of this one.
The fact that they couldn't secure the rights to the music being discussed is really glaring. Method Man is unsurprisingly the talking head MVP.
Makes sense that Fred Williamson produced this, as it has far most of his vaguely culturally conservative creative hallmarks (i.e. Uncle Fred & friends routinely out-fighting & out-cooling those damn kids, who live purely to commit pointless murder, assault & general mayhem) & essentially none of Larry Cohen's acerbic, anti-authority satirical bent.
The fact that the entire 'big 5' group of Blaxploitation era stars appear for the first & only time in a film together (Williamson, Pam Grier & Jim Brown are the main stars, with…
Don't know if this constitutes a 'story' exactly but it does come about as close as a movie can get to the experience of being in the company of a dope fiend, so if that's your bag for whatever reason you'll definitely dig this.
As for me, I got to witness this exact same shit live & in-person in my old building every time I had to take out the trash or go anywhere with hopheads all passed out in the…
