After a six year stint in the slammer O2 (he’s apparently called this because of his ability to vanish into thin air like oxygen, although the cops presumably can’t have had much trouble tracking him down when they arrested him) decides to turn over a new leaf.
Determined to escape from his unsavoury life of crime and drugs, O2 takes a respectable job as a security guard and vows never to leave his young son Junior (Hall) alone again.
And he manages to keep his word…for a whole five minutes at least, until his car (with Junior asleep in the back) gets jacked by a gang of hoodlums.
Ignoring his recent “crime is bad” sermon, O2 soon finds himself up to his neck - let alone waist - in the violent LA underworld that he vowed he would never return to.
They say:
New York Times: "Its narrative premise is whittled down to a mean little nub and placed carefully on the borderline between the wildly implausible and the completely absurd.”
LA Times: "For its first half hour, Waist Deep looks as if it's going to amount to something solid among so called urban thrillers. And then, everything flies off the rails.”
Village Voice: “For its ever shifting attitudes toward men, women, and murder, Waist Deep is one of the sloppiest movies ever to reach the screen.”
We say:
Despite appearing on award winning TV dramas such as The Shield and Sleeper Cell, Vondie Curtis Hall’s only other recent big screen directorial effort is Glitter (the Mariah Carey vehicle that is currently ranked 14th on the IMDB’s list of worst movies of all time) and it shows.
Dopey plot twists (would a convict on parole really be given a gun?), gratuitous nudity, and a tasteless line in violent misogyny (“start talking bitch or I’ll shoot you in the motherfucking face!”), make Waist Deep an ironically shallow experience.
Despite carrying out the action against the backdrop of anti crime rally, Curtis Hall revels in glorifying gang violence, and the story is packed with crude social stereotypes, formulaic action sequences and maudlin dialogue.
Of the cast, Gibson (2 Fast 2 Furious) and Good (Brick) put in decent performances amidst the dross, but rapper turned actor The Game (whose one eyed character is called “Meat” because he enjoys lopping limbs off his victims with a machete) is pure cartoon, and Hall may well be the most irritating child ever seen in the movies.
CAST
Tyrese Gibson
Meagan Good
Larenz Tate
The Game
Henry Hunter Hall
DIRECTOR
Vondie Curtis Hall
TIME
97 mins
POSTED...
Fri 3 Nov 2006 at 7:01pm
