★½
“Black to very basics.”
We return to the prolific well of Jeff Profitt, last seen here with Keisha Takes the Block. And by prolific, I mean that the IMDb lists now fewer than thirteen upcoming projects he is slated to direct. Fortunately for my backlog, most of these do not appear to be candidates for the site: I do confess some curiosity as to what Trap House Pizza is about. Anyway, both Choppa and Keisha are among the six features he directed in 2023, a number he exceeded last year. Quality is clearly subsidiary to quantity, and this has much the same problems as the last film we covered here, In particular, it’s mostly talk and not enough action.
You have three friends: Leah (Robinson), Jada (Alysha) and Shanice (Collins), all of whom are out of work and seeking a way to make money. Leah literally stumbles across a cache of weapons belonging to gun dealer Ricky (Profitt), and convinces him to let her sell his merch in the ‘hood. For the “Choppas” of the title are Kalashnikov AK-47’s, the weapon of choice for the discerning gang-banger. After the initial sale goes well, Leah gets a bigger order, and has to ask for the guns on credit. Which is a problem, first when Leah’s buyer delays paying for the weapons, and then Shanice’s boyfriend Ray discovers what she’s doing, and decides he wants in on the action. That eventually leads to the only bit of AK action this provides.
The skeleton of a decent movie is present here. It’s possible to read the above synopsis and see how it could be done in an exciting manner. For instance, tensions escalate among the group as the lure of the profits from their new, illegal, but hopefully temporary business, drags them over to the dark side, when the trio only wanted to make a living. It’s a classic tale of the slippery slope into criminality, with the net of the authorities closing inexorably around the participants. Unfortunately, the resources here do not allow for anything like that. It’s telling that the women are buying just three (3) guns at a time, and there are absolutely no cops to be found here at all.
Meanwhile, the script is strictly of the Point A to Point B variety, without real energy. The trio of lead actresses are okay: there are a few scenes where you can believe they genuinely are friends. The main problem on the performance side is Profitt himself, who is a contender for the world’s least convincing gun-runner. Used cars? Perhaps. Cellphones? Certainly. But now illegal firearms. He’s also very white, and I speak as someone whose skin colour is legally classified as “transparent.” If they’d made him an Aryan Nation type… that would have been a wrinkle. That, however, would be too much like hard work for a film which seems to be uninterested in anything except the path of least resistance to an underwhelming ending.
Dir: Jeff Profitt
Star: Tuckeya Robinson, Jasmine Alysha, Chanel Collins, Jeff Profitt