★½
“You’ll be a right Charlie if you bother with this one…”
I think I can safely say that this films fails miserably on just about every level. Now, I am probably not the target audience for this unashamedly ‘urban’ movie, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the works of Pam Grier. This, on the other hand… Three women (Brown, Nurse and Sha – though I’ve my suspicions that one of them might just be a man) are arrested under dubious circumstances, but are bailed out to investigate the murder of one’s brother, a rising rapper. They get employed at his record-label, the questionably-spelled Murda Boi records, to scope out the suspects. Was it his partner in the label? The sleazy CFO? Or the mail-room man?
I can cope with bad acting, if the action makes up for it. I can cope with bad action, given an interesting storyline. I can cope with a pedestrian script, as long as the performances enliven proceedings. when each aspect is more hideously inadequate than the next…I was reduced, for entertainment, to seeing how far I could jab my thumbs into my own eyeballs, without making them pop. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. However, even the 99 cents I paid for this DVD would appear sufficient to have funded most of the production – with probably enough left over to buy acting lessons for the performers most in need of them [including two-thirds of the leading laideez – Brown is tolerable in this regard]
But I think it’s probably the action sequences which are the nadir of this film’s elements, carried out at the pace of a Vicodin-addicted sloth, and with the originality and fluidity of a Republican National Congress. The DVD cover and tagline are particularly wide of the mark, since only one of the trio holds a gun at any point, and that’s just to take it away from a villain. Okay, given the price, I wasn’t exactly expecting…well, anything. However, I haven’t been so underwhelmed by a movie in a very long time. That’s 85 minutes of my life I’ll never have back.
Dir: Paul Wynne
Stars: Kenia Brown, Allison Nurse, Kita Sha, Erica Goings