Black Listed

Rating:
Summary: A lawyer's rage sets a bloodbath in motion.
Review: A lawyer is enraged at how dealers, rapist and killers skirt the law. One night he puts together a packet naming a dozen thugs that should've been sent to the syringe and not the street. His anger subsided he returns to his good suburban life. Until one morning he sees someone shambling towards him, drenched in someone else's blood. It is one of his colleagues, who received the packet and has begun the slaughter. This is Townsend's best film. This is Townsend as a hybrid of spike lee/quentin tarantino. The Action, the story, the cast. They keep you rooted to your seat till the bloody end.

Rating:
Summary: HARD TO ENJOY
Review: It is with a heavy heart that I write a bad review for a Robert Townsend film. But, quite frankly, it must be done. The script is pretty good. It's not original by any means but it was well thought out and the acting was great. But it was really hard to enjoy any of this movie's good attributes because it's very difficult to watch. I'm not certain if it was poorly filmed or the transfer to DVD was done by someone who wasn't highly skilled. The film had a grainy quality to it but it didn't seem intentional as if done in a semi-documentary style. Many times you would hear dialog between two charactors who were barely visible. Their faces would be more than half way off the screen leaving the viewer with nothing to see but blue sky. What made it so bad was that I watched the trailer of this movie on the DVD which was very clear and in widescreen (which the film is not). Is this really the same man who is responsible for "The Five Heartbeats", "Hollywood Shuffle" and "Meteor Man"? I may have enjoyed this movie more if it wasn't so hard on the eyes.