Straight Out of Brooklyn movie review (1991)
The movie covers a few days in the lives of a high school kid, who lives with his sister and his parents in a project. The story begins with brutal frankness, as the father, drunk, beats his wife and throws things around the apartment while the kids cower in the next room. In the morning, surrounded by the wreckage of their few possessions, the young man determines that this cannot go on any longer - that somehow he has to change the course his life seems set on.
During the day he hangs out with a couple of friends, and they begin to talk about the possibility of committing a crime. One of the friends (played by Matty Rich himself) suggests that maybe they could get jobs in a relative's gas station. But the hero is too angry and impatient for that, and when his girlfriend suggests making something of himself in college, his angry reply is that he doesn't have four or five years to spend in college. And besides (he tells her, as they look across to the Manhattan skyline), does she think the rich people who own Wall Street got there by following the rules? Not likely.
For most of the movie, the characters stand poised between two possible choices - between crime and trying to do the right thing. But the movie finds time to develop some of their complexities as they make up their minds, in well-written scenes such as the one where the mother actually defends her husband, even though he beats her; hospitalized by his brutality, she refuses to denounce him. And there are scenes of everyday life, goofing around, small talk, passing time. It all adds up to a convincing portrait of a big-city black teenager who feels that if he does not take some sort of conclusive action, life will clamp him into poverty and discouragement.
Matty Rich will someday, I imagine, make slicker movies than "Straight Out of Brooklyn." Movies with more so-called entertainment and production values. But will he ever make a movie more obviously from his heart? He financed this film in bits and pieces, asking the actors to work for free, filming on weekends over a period of two years, draining his family and friends of available cash, looking for loans and deferrals - and the important thing is, he kept at it, and it's an honest, effective film.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46sq6uZmZy1tXnOrqtmp5Zir7O7zqSjsqZdZoZ6fQ%3D%3D