Years after they saw their mother OD and their father shot in the legs over drug dealings, brothers Roemello and Raynathan now run the streets of Harlem. However Roemello begins to tire of the trade and looks to leave, a new girlfriend helping to show him what he is missing out on. However getting out is never easy and is made more complicated by Lolly Jonas moving in on their territory with the beginnings of a gang war.
The score to this film is a lazy, rambling blues number that plays consistently at times, like wallpaper. It is this score that I think sums up the weakness of this film - it is too slow, too patient and too lacking in style or energy. That's not to say it's a poor film for it is not, but it could have been better. Much has been done to try and make this quite a serious film that avoids the black gangsta clichés but the plot requires too much talking and exposition. This wouldn't have been as much of an issue if the characters and narrative had been more convincing.
However, I never fully bought Roemello and Raynathan as adults having just seen flashbacks of their childhood. I could accept that they would end up selling the poison that ruined their lives, but would Roemello been as balanced and as suave as he was? Likewise, in the drug game - to get on top wouldn't he needed to have been ruthless and violent? He just seems too nice. This lack of convincing characters is an issue as they were really needed to make the rather slow and talky script more involving. Despite this weakness the film is still interesting, it doesn't really do anything different from things you will have seen before, and parts of it hark back to better gangster-epic style films. It doesn't distinguish itself but I must give it credit for trying to be a serious black gangster film in a sea of New Jack type clichés in other films.
Snipes has become a better leading man with time and he tries to give a serious role here as a younger man but it never convinced me. I never got a sense of any menace or `dark side' to his character - he played him far too upright and moral to be a convincing character - his battle to go straight would have been more interesting if it didn't look like he was already halfway there! Randle is OK but has little to really do, and I never once understand where her character was coming from. Wright is a more erratic performance and more convincing than Snipes. Support is good from a variety of well known faces including Williams, Hill, Hudson and Bottoms.
Overall this is a serious gangster film that had potential but whose delivery is just a little too slow and talky. The characters are more than just clichés but the script can't get them where they need to go - it sets up complex characters with childhood background but then fails to bring that out as adults. Worth a watch but it is quite slow, aiming for the grandeur of better films that it can't quite reach.
