Directed by RZA
Written by P.G. Cuschieri
Starring Shameik Moore, Demetrius Shipp Jr. and T.I.
Running time: 2 hours and 3 minutes
MPAA rating: R for violence, pervasive language, drug content, some sexual material and nudity

by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy

I’m a fan of RZA, not just his music, but his aesthetic and overall worldview. So, I had fairly high hopes for this movie. I wasn’t expecting to be blown away, but I was looking to have an enjoyable time, a romp, if you will. But I’ll let you know right off, it just didn’t do it for me.

The basic plot outline is that it’s the story of four boyhood friends that are flat on their backs in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and they get coerced into pulling off a casino heist. It’s a good formula: a buddy movie, a heist movie and maybe a little bit of commentary thrown in about the federal response to the hurricane and how that exacerbated pre-existing issues in the communities it affected.

Instead, we were served up about a dozen different storylines, each with their own agenda, over the 2+ hour runtime. If any three or more of these storylines were cut out, I think we could have had a far more cohesive and enjoyable film with a more appropriate 90-100 minute runtime. However, there was just too much going on and nothing tying these disparate strands together. There’s a lot of great ideas here, a lot of solid messages supporting social justice, but the whole thing is just far too big for this movie to put its arms around.

With that said, the majority of the shots were very well done, the color palette was on point and the majority of the performances were very good. The only poor performance was Eiza González. I’m not sure if this was on her or RZA, though. It seemed like the majority of bigger name actors in this were just allowed to do their own thing. Wesley Snipes and Terrence Howard were particular stand-outs with Ethan Hawke giving an “average for him” performance (which is not a bad thing, just is what it is). The four friends (Shameik Moore, Demetrius Shipp Jr., Denzel Whitaker and Keean John) were all best when playing off of each other, and Moore as Blink did a good job carrying the majority of the story. T.I. was also good, but I found it strange that the character had Vitiligo. Representation is great, but I’m sure there’s tons of actors with Vitiligo that could have played the role just as well.

There were other issues as well. The storyline about Blink wanting to make graphic novels disappeared about three times as fast as it was introduced. I mean, the entire opening credit sequence is devoted to it and it’s gone after fifteen minutes. For some reason, there are four different endings. One in which two particular people die, another where one of those people is alive, the third seems to confirm that they are really dead and the fourth show the other person alive. I could see if it were presented as “in a just world, this would have happened” sense, but these seem to just be alternate endings you’d find on the DVD extras.

Like I’d said in the opening, I wanted to like this. I wanted it to be fun. Instead, the heist scenes were over way too fast and without much detail. The dramatic scenes had cuts and flashbacks reminiscent of low-end Lifetime movies. I just can’t really recommend this in any sense, and that bums me out.

Cut Throat City opens nationwide today.