"Boyz N the Hood," "Menace II Society" and "Baby Boy" are all films that give a realistic and accurate portrayal of their environment, and can be considered some of the more powerful urban tales.
Director Vondie Curtis-Hall's new movie, "Waist Deep," will not go down as one of those. Instead, it will go down as another unoriginal action film that focuses more on its body count than the quality of storytelling.
Curtis-Hall tries to send a message to the audience by setting the film in the violent and dangerous streets of south Los Angeles, during protests by local residents who want their streets to be safer.
In the middle of all the violence and protests is O2 (Tyrese Gibson), an ex-con with two strikes, trying to make ends meet by working security at a shopping center.
The name O2 comes from his past days as a super criminal resembling "Die Hard's" John McClane, a man with a gun who vanishes into thin air like Batman. These characteristics are behind the film's lack of reality and Hollywood feel.
After picking up his son, Junior (H. Hunter Hall), from school, O2's car is hijacked, and his son is kidnapped by a local L.A. gang.
O2 soon finds out that this wasn't just some regular hijacking and that local kingpin Meat — played by The Game in his film debut — is now holding Junior and wants $100,000 dollars. The audience soon finds out this $100,000 might have some significance from the past between O2 and Meat.
Along with a street hustler named Coco (Meagan Good), who may or may not have set him up, and his deceiving cousin Lucky (Larenz Tate), O2 spends the rest of the movie figuring out ways to get that $100,000.
The film does have some positive aspects, and one of those is Curtis-Hall's decision to put decent time and effort into some of the outside sources of the film.
The film's cinematography by Shane Hurlbut is absolutely brilliant and, in some ways, disturbingly beautiful as well. His ability to shoot the film from various angles that show the grit and roughness to each character helps make the film's setting much darker and more dangerous.
The film's score and soundtrack, put together by Terence Blanchard and Denaun M. Porter also suits the film and does a good job of balancing how much rap and musical score the audience hears.
The film's flaws mainly come from the script and story and how the actors are not giving the performances needed to overpower both of these flaws.
Every element of this script, from the characters' cheesy and not-so-tough names to random bank robberies and shootouts, which seem to never attract police attention until the people have long fled, make each scene more and more over-the-top.
The acting is not horrible by any means. Gibson has shown his talent since his strong performance in "Baby Boy," but he could have brought more of that performance to this role.
What eventually ruins any chance of this film breaking away from the stereotypical action film is the ending.
The melodramatic elements, the stupid one-liners and the predictable twist turned this film into the thing Curtis-Hall was probably trying to avoid — an ordinary and unentertaining film.
If a film is meant to be an action film, melodrama works, but in a film that begs to be taken seriously it takes away credibility.
People enjoy films like "Mission Impossible III" and "Poseidon" because they often know going into them that they're traditional "Hollywood" action films, and they aren't trying to send a message to the public.
In cases like "Waist Deep," the film begins by trying to send an underlying message to the audience. It is also telling the audience that it is trying to be as realistic and sincere to its setting as possible.
When a film is constantly adding cliché Hollywood moments to each scene, the audience begins to see it less as reality and more as fantasy, and "Waist Deep" does just that.
