★★½
“The long climb up.”
This is another one in the apparently endless series of low-budget urban movies, which focus on crime in the black community. Though this does actually have a couple of wrinkles which make it stand out, if not quite enough to make it a success for a wider audience outside its community. Columbus, Ohio is the setting, where Princess (Godsey) is struggling to make ends meet. She’s relying on handouts from her dodgy brother, Dae Dae, to make rent, and also wants to get her best friend away from her pimp. Opportunity comes knocking, in the shape of an Uber driver, Omar (Campbell), who brings her on board in his business, which he tells her has almost unlimited upside and growth potential.
to the movie’s credit, this isn’t the usual drug-dealing we’ve seen so many times before. While the specifics were a bit vague, it seems Omar is working on white-collar crime, syphoning off company payroll. His associate on the West coast, the appropriately named Cali (Bosley), is planning a hostile takeover, and brings Princess on board. Omar gets wind of this, only for Princess to turn the tables, leaving her boss for dead. That brings us to phase two of the movie, where Princess is now in charge of a nationwide enterprise. However, to no great surprise, it is not as easy as that, not least because Omar is still alive, and unhappy about the situation, to put it mildly.
To start with the positives, Godsey is a good actress, and indeed, most of the cast are solid enough, when their performances are given room to breathe. The first half of this, depicting Princess’s rise to the top, may be small scale, but is effective. I do have some questions though: for example, the reason why multi-millionaire entrepreneur Omar is working as an Uber driver, is never convincingly explained. However, the budget here is entirely incapable of depicting the lifestyle of Princess once she has reached at the top. It needs yachts, big cars, lavish apartments, etc. and the film never delivers. It feels like she’s probably still living in the same crappy apartment she inhabited at the beginning of the movie.
That’s far from uncommon: I’ve seen many similar films whose ambitions did not live up to their resources. A bigger problem, however, is the soundtrack. It feels simply like the director left his Spotify account on random, with one of an endless selection of songs written and performed by his mates, blasting every three minutes. There seems to have been little or no attempt to choose the songs to fit the needs of the scene, and they are far more often a jarring distraction. Occasionally, we get some sequences where Campbell does exercise restraint, opting for stock music instead, and these are inevitably better. But I’m not averse to Campbell overall, who shows enough talent, along with his lead actress, that they will be worth keeping an eye on going forward.
Dir: Dom Campbell
Star: Courtney Godsey, Dom Campbell, Kenneth Bse Count Bosley, Vivica Cartier