I, along with a large chunk of the male population of this world, believe that Angelina Jolie is one of the most beautiful creatures on this green Earth (or quite brown in some drought ridden places such as our backyard) and have since become a fan of her movies. One night in a family video renting, I walked up the aisles of the video store trying to find something that grabbed my attention. In the Thriller section, I found many copies of this movie, and I question the judgement of the staff, as this is quite clearly a drama, and a pretty good one. Fortunately, I did not rent it out that night, as my Father would have had kittens if he let me watch this (for the record, I personally think I should have waited until I was a bit older), so I waited until he wasn't the one paying for it, and I got it then.
Mekhi Phifer plays Jonny, a man who was involved in a robbery that went wrong, and as a result, an accomplice, Hayden is killed. Gloria (played -as usual- superbly by Angelina Jolie) was Hayden's sister, and confronts Jonny five years later after he gets out of jail, blaming him for the death of her brother. She asks her boyfriend, Patty, to kill Jonny, but for reasons that I shall not reveal, Patty knows that Jonny did not kill Hayden. Jonny settles back into Hell's Kitchen and trains to be a heavyweight champion.
Some of the scenes are a bit too long, some are a bit disturbing, some are a bit weird, and some of them have all these things mixed together.
But on the whole a good movie, but not one made for younger audiences. 8/10
p.s. I might not be a good judge of the pacing of this movie, because when I watched it, we had younger visitors, and they weren't allowed to watch it, so I had to keep stopping and starting it, which is a shocking way to watch a movie.
