NOTE: This film was recommended to me by YouTube user Kjo Schultz for "Steve Pulaski Sees It." Hype Williams' Belly follows the troubled escapades of two New York street criminals named Tommy (DMX) and Sincere (Nas), in addition to their partners in crime, as the gang spends their nights cracking cars and robbing nightclubs using little else other than brute force. This provides them with pocket money for the meantime; enough where Tommy can satisfy his girlfriend Keisha (Taral Hicks) and Sincere can take care of his girlfriend Tionne (Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins) and infant daughter.
However, the big break for these gentleman comes at the turn of the 2000's, when heroin prices are escalating and the business is becoming a lucrative venture for anyone willing to take the risk. Tommy and Sincere go on to meet "Ox" (Louie Rankin), a heroin drug lord who wants to work with the men due to their promise. The perils of urban life soon take their toll on the men, in addition to greed and self-absorption, most of it resting on Sincere, who has to constantly battle the push and pull effect he gets with his business and his wife nearly every day.
Belly is an interesting street-drama largely for its cinematography, and surprisingly not so much for its two leading male performers, two of the biggest names in hip-hop at the time. Rather than opting for flare with a constantly moving camera or canted angles similar to the Hughes Brothers' Menace II Society (this film also featured Tyrin Turner from that film in a small supporting performance, as well), Williams and cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed employ a wide variety of different ambiance and aesthetic warmth to the film. Consider the scene in a nightclub, where the blacklights make the characters "glow" blue in a strangely eerie, unsettling manner. Then consider one of the chase sequences in the film and how Williams employs very vivid, cleanly shot and paced car chases that help make a film that's mostly grounded in reality suspend disbelief for a few minutes in order to give you something completely different.
There's more variety to Belly than I initially had predicted. The issue at hand is that there is so much going on in Belly that it's a shame character development suffers as a result. Granted, this particular drama doesn't have a liberal three hours to build up character relations, but it doesn't have the same hard-hitting punch and haunting, "urban jungle" vibes as a film like New Jack City did a few year prior. DMX and Nas do a fairly adequate job of conveying characters, but there's not a lot to them as people, which makes their performances, as well as their characters, stunted from any kind of significant growth.
On an unrelated note, the soundtrack for Belly is what truly pushes it over and makes it a presence. Songs from Wu-Tang Clan, Method Man, and DMX himself populate a film that pulsates with life and adds to the noir-aesthetic Williams and Sayeed work to create. While it's unfortunate that Belly's lacking character development and rather subpar plot distract its loftier, more impressive elements, there's almost never too many urban films that depict some kind of dichotomy between playing by the rules and ripping the rulebook to shreds when you look at where it has gotten you. The film, in many ways, proudly showcases that.
Starring: DMX, Nas, Taral Hicks, Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, Louie Rankin, and Tyrin Turner. Directed by: Hype Williams.
