Opening tomorrow in a limited number of theaters is LUV, an indie crime thriller that far outpaces the studio release I reviewed yesterday. Like with Broken City, a powerhouse cast led by Common (Smokin' Aces) and Dennis Haysbert (Heat) bring a soulfulness and gravitas to what otherwise might have been your average urban noir. But despite some minor flaws in its structure, LUV is able to transcend its modest budget to become something greater. Without ever falling into empty preachiness, LUV seems to possess a social consciousness that eludes the other film.
This sense of morality may begin with LUV's producer and star, rapper Common. He plays recently released ex-convict Vincent, who's seeking a loan for a new business. His nephew Wood (Michael Rainey, Jr.) aches for his mom, absent for reasons only alluded to at the start of the film. Together Vincent and Wood seek comfort from each other, while each looks to the other for a new role model. For Wood, Uncle Vincent seems like the very example of male authority; "Vincent the Fearless" he labels him in a drawing re-casting his uncle as a superhero. For Vincent, Wood is a talisman representing legitimacy, a self-imposed obstacle that will hopefully restrict him from straying into criminality once again.
LUV comes across as an odd and unlikely cross between two early 90s films that couldn't be more dissimilar. Wood's quest for self-respect in a criminal milieu recklessly introduced to him by his uncle immediately calls Fresh to mind. But believing that the boy's evolution from shy, private school student to hardened, little scammer takes place over the 24-hour-span covered by LUV may be asking too much of its audience. Where LUV really succeeds is in the bond forged between Vincent and his nephew. Vincent and Wood's relationship is strikingly reminiscent of the one depicted in A Perfect World, which asks the viewer to sympathize with an escaped convict who's honestly trying to educate his young, fatherless hostage on how to be a man. But that movie also questions his methods as the escapee subjects the child to life-altering and endangering traumas.
As Vincent, Common displays an astonishing amount of vulnerability, more than one might expect from a rap artist. But even in his music he's always been conscious of the need to provide his fans with an uplifting example. In LUV, his character stresses the need to go legit while the movie taps into his frustration at being unable to escape a kind of institutionalized criminality that may already be too deep-seated to eliminate. At every turn, Vincent goes for the quick and easy way towards clearing a path to his goal, whether it's identity theft in order to obtain a clean record or asking the former crime boss (Haysbert) who once abandoned him to provide him with start-up capital. It's less the mark of a good businessman than that of a desperate one.
New director Sheldon Candis is adept at bringing the best out of his actors, and he has a storied ensemble to contend with, including Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon), Clark Johnson (Homicide: Life on the Street), Lonette McKee (The Cotton Club), Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire) and others. Candis also capitalizes on LUV's Baltimore setting to give the film its verisimilitude. But he could use more of his lead actor's contemplativeness. A quick-cutting editing style used to establish the characters at the start of the film works against the thoughtfulness the moody LUV seeks to engender. Telescoping the circumstances of the entire Vincent-Wood relationship into one day likewise asks viewers to take a larger leap than one should. It's a minor problem, though, and one that certainly doesn't stop LUV from successfully and poetically articulating its cautionary tale.
LUV opens tomorrow exclusively at AMC Theatres as part of their AMC Independent program. Look for local listings here.
I've got a review of this going up tomorrow. I thought it was crucial how the first moments are almost like an early David Gordon Green movie before it a train whistle wakes Woody in Baltimore. It felt like a declaration of purpose, a refusal to use a child's perspective as an excuse to shy away from reality rather than confront it.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the movie doesn't quite live up to that statement, but I still found it to be an intermittently powerful look at cycles of violence perpetuated as proof of masculinity. Thought Common was great as a man so conditioned to think he can never back down that he never seems to consider just how irrevocably he moves away from his desire to go straight.
Nice way of describing the opening, Jake. I don't entirely disagree with your assessment of the rest of the film. But for me, its virtues outweighed its flaws.
ReplyDeleteLook forward to your review tomorrow.
Oh, to be clear, I think it's a more than solid movie, with a host of fine performances (I think Glover and Haysbert make almost as much an impression as Common as his own twisted father figures). Sometimes ambiguity is the easy way out, but that last shot, poised so heartbreakingly on a hard jettison away from everything or the force that will trap Woody in that cycle forever, really got to me. I guess there were just some parts that felt a bit languid for me, but not to any serious detriment. I think I was just so happy to see a movie set out to show that a child is capable of facing the harshness of life without dressing it up in removed poetics that nothing quite matched that thrill.
ReplyDeleteglad you enjoyed this movie too. i was surprised by Common's talent to carry this film. the film was sensitively told yet brutish at the same time.
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