I have to agree with the rest that as a 'film', Wild Style is pretty poor. Poorly acted, paced and directed. It's main purpose is to capture a special culture, and it does just that so extremely well.
Nothing else comes close to capturing the undiluted, un-hollywoodized spirit of the early grafitti and hip hop communities.
My only real complaint about the film is that it leads people to believe the hip hop community and the graffiti community are one in the same. They're not. They did both begin to pick up steam at around the same time and in similar places but there's no direct connection between the two.
This might seem like a quibble to some but for real graffiti writers who see what they do as art, there's a strong desire not to be associated with things like "gansta rap". There is in fact no real reflection of what's going in the graffiti world in the hip hop world and vice versa.
Still, for fans of either or both, this movie is a treasure.
Nothing else comes close to capturing the undiluted, un-hollywoodized spirit of the early grafitti and hip hop communities.
My only real complaint about the film is that it leads people to believe the hip hop community and the graffiti community are one in the same. They're not. They did both begin to pick up steam at around the same time and in similar places but there's no direct connection between the two.
This might seem like a quibble to some but for real graffiti writers who see what they do as art, there's a strong desire not to be associated with things like "gansta rap". There is in fact no real reflection of what's going in the graffiti world in the hip hop world and vice versa.
Still, for fans of either or both, this movie is a treasure.