RUTHERFORD ON FILM: “Waist Deep” in Neighborhood Insecurity Strikes Close to Huntington
By Tony RutherfordHuntington News Network Writer
Huntington, WV (HNN) -- Neighborhoods fouled by protests against city services which are not controlling crime form the backdrop or a bad guys doing crack versus bad guys and gals who have had their lives ruined by drugs. Families and friends have similar stigmas in their character. The only “innocent” or “good guy” in the ensemble happens to be a child.
On parole for about a month (Tyrese Gibson) has a job working security. He”s clean. He”s done his time. When his Cousin Lucky (Larenz Tate) can not pick up his boy, Junior ( H. Hunter Hall ). and his relief is late, dad walks off the job to pick up the child. Traveling through the rough, sad, mean streets of South Central L.A., he”s marauding through a section of the city where crack, prostitution, and beatings fuel never ceasing circles of addiction.
Lack of skills, lack of support systems, and a lack of finances foster never ceasing cyclic chain reactions of violence, which quickly propels the parolee into gang battles. Stopped by street hustler Coco (Meagan Good), his vehicle is hijacked with Junior asleep in the back. Bullets blaze, but the young man now has a $100,000 price tag on him.
Gradually sucking you into its melodrama, “Waist Deep” has its share of frantic and clever Bonnie and Clyde moments, but here the criminal life comes not from choice but from necessity. Having bathed his audience in the politics and economics of crack addiction, “Deep”s” director Vondie Curtis-Hall, whose TV series credits range from “ER” and “Chicago Hope” to “Soul Food” and “The Shield,” applies the “best of” small screen crime drama skills to big screen demands.
By sticking with a rather blasé but occasionally intense redemption for the sake of the kid scenario, the director gains preponderance of the evidence leverage for his “02” and “Coco,” his hero and heroine just barely on the side of “good” over “evil.” If I had not been exposed to harsher urban dramas (and a few in real life), my heart might not error on the side of good person wanna-be”s. In fact, as their lives unfold amidst the nearly impossible ransom demand, their string of robberies to set gang versus gang decelerates potentiality to declare them “cult” vigilante heroes.
With chants of “save our streets [from gangs]” and a brief speech that the War on Terror is really about the ‘hood lacking security, the nod falls with some difficulty on the couple whose safe deposit robbery diversions offer more than opportunities for Ms. Good to show off her leggy assets. The way she diverts security guards through ample suggestiveness works nicely, too.
None of these assets earn “Waist Deep” enough symbolic crusading to push either over the vigilante (Charles Bronson in “Death Wish” or the more recent “V for Vengeance”) road. Instead, Gibson and Good stand and sweat as two former addiction allies fighting to escape inevitable outcomes from swimming too long with sharks. For some unknown reason, the during his captivity Junior seems content to snooze, rather than roll and tumble asking for daddy.
Imperfect, like its characters, “Waist Deep” more than once flounders on a damnation precipice, yet add enough police chases and bullet bounces to qualify as a better “B” or “drive-in” auctioneer. And, they don”t make them like they used to either.