"Slam," the typical tale of a black man living in the ghettos of Washington just doing whatever he can to survive. Marc Levin embarks on a film where a young black man Ray Joshua, played by Saul Williams, gets caught dealing after the man he was dealing with is shot. Ray later gets sentenced to jail for four years where his natural gift of slam poetry is embraced. In one encounter he finds himself developing feelings for Lauren Bell, a woman visits prison for poetry sessions, also shares a passion for slam poetry. Together, they find out how similar they really are, while Ray makes a decision of staying in the place that got him in the mess he's in now, or he takes a different way, the way that could free him from all his daily misery.
The story is bland, far from what I hoped it to be. To me the most exciting scenes in the film were towards the end when a bunch of characters from the movie recited slam poems. Unfortunately, the film is just trying to show us how people who live in the ghetto, stay in the ghetto for the most part. They don't have aspirations of leaving because being sufficient to them means selling drugs to make a living. Ray, like many others have many forces that define who he is. For one, the poverty from where he is raised and currently lives is a force that is carried out throughout the film. Another force would be the "because you are black and poor, there's no place for you outside of the ghetto." The negativity that discriminating people have for African-Americans triggers Ray. Even though I believe that this film was a repetition of what struggling black people in the ghettos go through on an everyday basis, I feel like the integration of poetry into his life gave a little piece of hope that many could have just thrown it away.
All in all I didn't think the quality of the film was all that great. It seemed like I was watching a live documentary being shot from a regular video recorder. I personally don't like movies that finish open-ended, but for others it gives them a way to imagine how the film would have ended having had them as the director. In part the message of the film is trying to tell us is that no matter how poor conditions you were brought up in, there is a way to break out and find that good-positive path that deep down inside everyone wished they had. Sadly, the message is never really concluded because we don't know what Ray ends up deciding on. If you like the typical lost and confused boy who doesn't know where and who to turn to in the beginning, ends up ruining his life in the middle, and ends up somewhat saving his life again—then you'll like "Slam."
The story is bland, far from what I hoped it to be. To me the most exciting scenes in the film were towards the end when a bunch of characters from the movie recited slam poems. Unfortunately, the film is just trying to show us how people who live in the ghetto, stay in the ghetto for the most part. They don't have aspirations of leaving because being sufficient to them means selling drugs to make a living. Ray, like many others have many forces that define who he is. For one, the poverty from where he is raised and currently lives is a force that is carried out throughout the film. Another force would be the "because you are black and poor, there's no place for you outside of the ghetto." The negativity that discriminating people have for African-Americans triggers Ray. Even though I believe that this film was a repetition of what struggling black people in the ghettos go through on an everyday basis, I feel like the integration of poetry into his life gave a little piece of hope that many could have just thrown it away.
All in all I didn't think the quality of the film was all that great. It seemed like I was watching a live documentary being shot from a regular video recorder. I personally don't like movies that finish open-ended, but for others it gives them a way to imagine how the film would have ended having had them as the director. In part the message of the film is trying to tell us is that no matter how poor conditions you were brought up in, there is a way to break out and find that good-positive path that deep down inside everyone wished they had. Sadly, the message is never really concluded because we don't know what Ray ends up deciding on. If you like the typical lost and confused boy who doesn't know where and who to turn to in the beginning, ends up ruining his life in the middle, and ends up somewhat saving his life again—then you'll like "Slam."