Change Your Image
FishSteak
Reviews
Life Is Hot in Cracktown (2009)
A quick note
A quick note to address a couple of points reviewers have made: (1) "The only redeemable characters in the film are non-black." Really? One of the kindest, most decent and, yes, redeemable, characters in the film is not only black, but a black woman. The transsexual prostitute is quite decent and redeemable at the end. I guess it all goes up to what you consider "redeemable." If you mean they have hope for the future, well, any of them being "redeemable" in that sense is rather unrealistic. But when I see that word I interpret it as whether they, aside from being crushed by circumstances, have the makings of morally good people (morally in the universal sense -- caring about others, helping others, etc.).
(2) "The film is preachy." I don't think so at all -- in fact, several reviewers have shown appreciation for the fact that it isn't, here. But you'll always have some who find something so, I suppose. To the contrary, while there's an element of "just desserts" -- I too did find Romeo's end right and proper, and never found him forgivable, but I don't think he was meant to be so -- while there's that element, as I experienced it, it left the characters and the situations rather ambiguous and complex, not subject to easy preachiness at all. If anything, I think it did an admirable job of saying, these things are not simple.
(3) "The characters are too prettied up." Well, there's some truth to this. But this is a message film, and it's an unfortunate fact that the kind of people in the "To:" line of this film are psychologically unprepared for it all at once, and many, though well-meaning, would be strongly turned away by more realistic squalor, skin tones and visible signs of ill health. You can't have it all, and I think he found a good balance. I *do* think he showed the cops as way too much of a positive force in these neighborhoods, and *that* could have also used some counterbalance. Corrupt and/or hostile cops is a *big* deal in inner-city neighborhoods. The main cop was the image of gentle kindness, and even the smug young white cop just ended up being smug and demeaning a bit.