SLAM (Trimark) Starring: Saul Williams, Sonja Sohn, Bonz Malone, Beau Sia. Screenplay: Marc Levin, Richard Stratton, Bonz Malone, Saul Williams and Sonja Sohn. Producers: Henri M. Kessler, Richard Stratton, Marc Levin. Director: Marc Levin. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, violence, sexual situations) Running Time: 100 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
SLAM appeals to everything critics want movies to be. It tells a story of a side of American life most of us are lucky enough never to see. It has a unique narrative rhythm, and a gritty, uncompromising style. It's an idea movie, one that clearly wants its audience to walk out pondering its weighty themes rather than humming a theme song or grinning from ear to ear. It comes with the pedigree of an award-winning documentary film-maker directing his first feature film, and a Sundance Film Festival Grand Prize. SLAM is a great praise-worthy package.
It is not, however, a great film. In fact, it's not even a particularly good one. Documentarian Marc Levin (HBO's "Bangin' in Little Rock") brings his verite style to the story of Ray Joshua (Saul Williams), a street poet and small-time marijuana dealer in Washington D.C.'s inner city. Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time during a gang shooting, Ray ends up convicted of possession with intent. In prison, Ray finds his survival may depend on allying himself with prison gang leaders like Hopha (Bonz Malone), even though Ray claims to be a pacifist. He also meets Lauren (Sonja Sohn), a poet offering creative writing classes for inmates. The two cross paths again upon Ray's release from prison, where their relationship forces ray to conider his role in the decay of his environment.
SLAM virtually bubbles and boils with provocative concepts and viscerally effective scenes. Though at first it seems like it may be little more than a liberal tract on hard lives, inequities in the judicial system and the like, the film probes a bit deeper, questioning whether Ray is part of the solution or part of the problem. It's also hard not to feel a charge from the scene in which Ray defuses a potential fight in the prison workout yard by bursting into a poem of paralyzing ferocity. With Levin occasionally toning down the strident voice for a few wry observations (including Malone's smooth turn as the prison entrepreneur and Marion Barry's cameo as a trial judge waxing ironically indignant about drug dealing), SLAM at its best does manage to grab hold of you.
Then, nearly as quickly, it'll let you go again. SLAM depends almost entirely on gripping you in the thrall of its intensity, but that doesn't always happen with a pair of inexperienced lead actors handling the most challenging material. Saul Williams doesn't have the chops to handle Ray's complex character arc, nor can Sonja Sohn always handle Lauren's didactic role. That leads to scenes where the two merely shout at each other with a discouraging lack of subtlety. As comfortable as they may be with the rat-a-tat, stream-of-insanity style of their poetry (showcased in scenes at coffee house poetry "slams"), it often feels like that's the only note they can bring to their performances.
Make no mistake, Levin and his cast understand this milieu, and the sincerity of their conviction is never in doubt. Their film-making instincts are another matter entirely. From moment to moment, Levin alternates between compelling realism and the pretentious whiff of conspicuous symbolism -- a gangsta who becomes enlightened after he is blinded, for instance, or the hollowly open-ended final shot. SLAM is its own kind of tone poem, I suppose, its success riding on the strong accented beats provided by a few individually effective scenes. Yet ultimately that's all it is -- a collection of emotional iambs, alternately engrossing and meandering. Sincerity can only get you so far, even when you're telling a story everyone would like to have told.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 slam funks: 5.
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