Gridlock'd (1997)

Not even bad in a good way

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Actor Vondie Curtis-Hall, who I've seen in Broken Arrow, debuts as writer and director with this drug based film, the last to star rapper Tupac Shakur before his death from shooting, during post-production. Basically, in Detroit, Barbara 'Cookie' Cook (Thandie Newton) has overdosed on her first time using heroin, and her best friends and band mates Ezekiel 'Spoon' Whitmore (Shakur) and Alexander 'Stretch' Rawland (Tim Roth) decide to kick their habit. To do this they want to enrol on a detox program, but this is becoming very difficult as they sent from place to place. The big problem is that Spoon and Stretch are being searched for by the police after it looks like they are suspects to a murder. Also the drug fuelled men who really committed the murder, gangster D-Reper (Curtis-Hall) and his Henchman (Tom Towles) are after them as well. In the end, Cookie wakes up from her drug-induced coma and walks out of the same hospital where it looks like Spoon and Stretch are finally going to get what they want. Also starring Who Framed Roger Rabbit's Charles Fleischer as Mr. Woodson, Howard Hesseman as Blind Man, James Pickens Jr. as Supervisor, John Sayles as Cop #1 and Eric Payne as Cop #2. Shakur and Roth make a really good double act, Newton has her moments in the flashback sequences, and it is a darkly funny take on inner city life and some drug use, a good black comedy. Worth watching!

Didn't intend to watch but was flicking channels and hooked from the first few minutes. Maybe I should have known, but didn't realise it was Tupac Shakur initially - just thought I was watching a good actor I'd not seen before. A real shame such a talented man's life was taken..Roth & Shakur work incredibly well together despite some initial feelings that Shakur just seemed too cool to be hanging out with someone like Roth, but it works as the story moves along. Would recommend this to anyone as a well presented story with some genuinely funny moments...very minor SPOILER alert...watch out for the scene with the pocket knife later in the movie, great funny scene.

There's a sarcastic phrase people use here in the UK that goes, "How very different from the home life of our own dear Queen!" It definitely applies to this movie! Tupac Shakur and Tim Roth play two small-time drug-addled crooks who have a bad experience, so they decide to get clean. They're completely sincere and determined to do it, but the film is about how difficult it is, in practical terms, to get off drugs in today's USA. Despite all the political hype and the government programmes and the well-meaning organisations, when a guy actually walks in off the street and says 'Get Me Off Drugs', he faces a bewildering maze of stifling bureaucracy and indifferent public officials which seems designed to set him straight back on the cycle of despair.So the film is sometimes frustrating to watch. It's grim in parts too. But it's also very funny. Tim Roth is as good as ever, but Shakur is a revelation. His earlier films were not so good, but here (his final movie before being murdered) he seemed to hit a groove. The chemistry between the two leads is great. The film is really about friendship as much as anything else.Gridlocked is different to any film you've ever seen. At 91 minutes it doesn't out-stay its welcome, and the pacy direction keeps it moving along nicely. It's not a classic but it is well worth seeing.

Seriously, next time you hear a black director complaining about how tough it is to get their movie made or how biased the Hollywood system is don't blame 'the man' no matter how tempting...blame Vondie Curtis Hall. Once thought to be the Spike Lee of useless people, Mr. Hall vaulted himself into the loser hall of fame not long after Gridlock'd for his work on the monumental Glitter, which would have been the Gigli of it's day had Mariah Carey not been long washed up by the time of its release. Lil' Vondie did no better with Gridlock'd despite having a decent cast and a plot revolving around heroin, which was like the goose that laid the golden demographic during most of the 90's. Unfortunately, Hall chose to make the actors say line that even Jesus couldn't pull off and throw in every cliché in three books. I guess he thought that making a relevant black movie was as easy as being black and hiring a prominent hip hop star to act in unfortunately his worst, and I believe last, role of a relatively short career. Throw in a little Tim Roth during his "I'm too cool for school because I'm in some Tarantino flicks and can do no wrong" period of overratedness and some absolutely embarrassingly brutal scenes of the two of them in a Jazz club playing stand-up bass and keyboards, respectively, with Thandie Newton on vocals and you, my dear Vondie, have a perfect recipe for a truly pathetic disaster. But you have to give him a little credit, somehow he convinced two pretty big stars to take a chance on his little movie, who most would think was not even quite at first draft stage, (although who knows...maybe it would have been great with a competent director)and somehow after this horrific disaster still lived to magically taint the disease-ridden career of Mariah Carey to irreparable levels. I'm no expert, but I'd say he does a lot of praying.