An examination of the New York rap scene in the late nineties uncovers a lot of characters who don't know anything about themselves, and don't care about much about anything else.
I just watched this film sixteen years after it was made, and give the film credit for attempting to catch the language of the generation that it portrays. It doesn't succeed. It doesn't even try to catch the trouble of the times, nor the immediacy of the subject matter. The topics of racism, poverty and discrimination - which powered most of the New York scene in the nineties - weren't covered. Instead, much of the focus was on confused European Americans who worshiped hip-hop as a form of rebellion. Those scenes weren't even done right.
James Toback wrote and directed the film in a vignette format. He jumps around from character to character giving them very little to do other than show no respect for whoever might be the authority figure.
Who are the authority figures? Well, one is a banker, and another is the D.A. of NY. Ironically, the banker was probably involved with trading dirivatives which would go on to wreck the worldwide economy seven years later. And the real D.A. of NY at the time of this film's making would later be thrown out of elected office for funneling money to a prostitute and her escort services business - an escort that he was seeing at the time of the film's release.
That's the problem with Toback's film - not that it lacks foresight. (It truly has no vision.) The principal problem is that it doesn't take the grievances or problems or wants of the character's it tries to portray as serious. Part of it was because he didn't do sufficient research into the characters or the genre of Hip Hop.
The black rappers in the film are gangsta rappers - which if Toback would have done any type of investigation into the field, he would have found that the group he was writing about were West Coast rappers - not East Coast. There is no Puff Daddy or 50 Cent in this group. The basketball player that he portrays wouldn't have been asking his girlfriend if he should take $50,000 from a gambler. He would have asked his super rich drug dealing friend if he should have taken $50,000 from a gambler. Not to show any disrespect to his girlfriend, but his friend had probably more experience with that type of money, and problems caused by taking that type of money.
Was Toback trying to create a film that showed his dislike of Rap? It seems that way. That's not where the fault lies. It lies in the fact that his dislike of the subject matter blinded him from doing the necessary crafting that goes into making a good film.
I just watched this film sixteen years after it was made, and give the film credit for attempting to catch the language of the generation that it portrays. It doesn't succeed. It doesn't even try to catch the trouble of the times, nor the immediacy of the subject matter. The topics of racism, poverty and discrimination - which powered most of the New York scene in the nineties - weren't covered. Instead, much of the focus was on confused European Americans who worshiped hip-hop as a form of rebellion. Those scenes weren't even done right.
James Toback wrote and directed the film in a vignette format. He jumps around from character to character giving them very little to do other than show no respect for whoever might be the authority figure.
Who are the authority figures? Well, one is a banker, and another is the D.A. of NY. Ironically, the banker was probably involved with trading dirivatives which would go on to wreck the worldwide economy seven years later. And the real D.A. of NY at the time of this film's making would later be thrown out of elected office for funneling money to a prostitute and her escort services business - an escort that he was seeing at the time of the film's release.
That's the problem with Toback's film - not that it lacks foresight. (It truly has no vision.) The principal problem is that it doesn't take the grievances or problems or wants of the character's it tries to portray as serious. Part of it was because he didn't do sufficient research into the characters or the genre of Hip Hop.
The black rappers in the film are gangsta rappers - which if Toback would have done any type of investigation into the field, he would have found that the group he was writing about were West Coast rappers - not East Coast. There is no Puff Daddy or 50 Cent in this group. The basketball player that he portrays wouldn't have been asking his girlfriend if he should take $50,000 from a gambler. He would have asked his super rich drug dealing friend if he should have taken $50,000 from a gambler. Not to show any disrespect to his girlfriend, but his friend had probably more experience with that type of money, and problems caused by taking that type of money.
Was Toback trying to create a film that showed his dislike of Rap? It seems that way. That's not where the fault lies. It lies in the fact that his dislike of the subject matter blinded him from doing the necessary crafting that goes into making a good film.