Susan Granger's review of "SLAM" (Trimark Pictures)
Marc Levin's low-budget ($1 million) chronicle of poetry behind bars justifiably captured the 1998 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Camera D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Shot on location in Washington, D.C., the film features a cast of non-actors including controversial Mayor Marion Berry, who faced a real-life conviction on drug charges, in an ironic cameo as a criminal court judge. The story follows the spiritual and artistic journey of a small-time marijuana dealer and rapper, played by dreadlock'd Saul Williams, who is sentenced to prison after he's caught fleeing the scene of a drug-related shooting in a ghetto housing project known as Dodge City. In the grim process of rehabilitation, he finds love with a reformed prostitute/crack addict, Sonja Sohn, who becomes his writing teacher and salvation through "slamming," a combination of poetry and rap. The story-behind-the-story adds fascination to what's on the screen. Saul Williams and Sonja Sohn were discovered at a real-life urban poetry slam and many of the extras were actual prisoners in the D.C. criminal justice system. One of the film's producers, Richard Stratton, as well as Bonz Malone, who plays a prison gang leader, cites art as redeeming him from a life of crime. Cinema verite cinematographer Marc Benjamin uses a hand-held camera as Marc Levin superimposes a documentary style on an innovative and topical theme; unfortunately, Levin's delight in the emotional honesty of his subjects occasionally becomes self-indulgent and the length of the improvisations can be stultifying. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Slam" is a fresh, daring, emotionally challenging 7. It's scary, strong, street-wise stuff.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews