VOD Review - Cut Throat City

The title refers to New Orleans and the time period is around the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. Directed by The RZA, a rapper in the Wu-Tang Clan, this film is a genre exercise focusing on the psychical and emotional effect of that storm on the young Black men and young men of color in the Lower Ninth Ward. It's assumed that people know that the Lower Ninth Ward is the predominantly African-American neighborhood that was hit the hardest and mostly destroyed after Katrina made landfall. While there have been documentaries exploring this issue, a genre film is one that is due. The RZA invokes the mood, vibe and even basic premises of a lot of the films featuring African-Americans in the 90's, mostly the crime dramas of that time, which could be seen as a genre in and of itself. This film could essentially be described as a heist film, centering on a group of robbers and armed thieves, but thieves connected to drug violence and other gang activity. This film depicts why the thieves would be pushed to commit the crimes and the aftermath of them making their choices.

In a lot of ways, it does feel like those crime dramas or thrillers featuring predominantly Black casts in the 1990's. It's funny because one of the actors in this film looks like Tupac Shakur and in fact played Shakur in a 2017 biopic. It's funny because this film at moments feels like Shakur's first starring role, that of Juice (1992). However, films in that same vein also feel like they're being invoked, films like New Jack City (1991), Menace II Society (1993) and Dead Presidents (1995). It feels like RZA is invoking those films because actors from some of those aforementioned films appear in this one. It's not just that we're seeing the same or similar themes being explored but we're also seeing the same faces, literally the same faces from those films.

Shameik Moore (Wu-Tang: An American Saga and The Get Down) stars as James Greenville aka Blink, a young Black man in New Orleans, 2005. He's an artist, doing pencil drawings. He aspires to do comic strips or graphic novels, such as comic books. He gets married to a woman with a child. It wasn't clear to me, if that child was biologically his, but he does get married and he does so right before Hurricane Katrina. Recovering from that devastation, finding a job and providing an income for his wife and their child become the drive for him.

Kat Graham was in the aforementioned, Tupac Shakur biopic, All Eyez on Me (2017). Here, she plays Demyra, the wife to Blink. It's not sure what she does for work, but she's struggling with Blink and her child in poverty, especially in the wake of the hurricane. She has a relative though who is a bit of a crime lord and is making money, even while she and Blink are struggling.

Demetrius Shipp Jr. is the actor who actually played Tupac Shakur in All Eyez on Me. Here, he plays Miracle, the best friend to Blink. Not only does he look like Shakur but his character here is almost reminiscent of Shakur's character in Juice. Shakur's character in that 1992 film was the one pushing for him and his group of friends to engage in criminal activity in order to get ahead in their struggling poverty. Here, Miracle is practically the same. Miracle is pushing that he, Blink and their two other friends engage in criminal activity by going to Demyra's relative.

Tip 'T.I.' Harris (Ant-Man and American Gangster) plays Lorenzo Bass aka Cousin Bass, the relative to Demyra who is a bit of a crime lord. It's not exactly clear what his principal crimes are. It's probably a mix of crimes. When Blink and his friends approach Cousin Bass, his job for them is to rob a casino. When things go wrong as things tend to do, Blink and his friends have to keep robbing places like casinos. At one point, the film feels like it's going to be akin to Hell or High Water (2016). Unfortunately, the film gets muddled in its messaging about the corruption at play that contributes to the broader story being told here.

It gets muddled mainly because it juggles too much and what it does juggle doesn't get enough time. The film introduces characters played by Ethan Hawke, Rob Morgan and Terrence Howard who is the actor from Dead Presidents that appears here. I like all three of those actors but each of their characters feel superfluous to the main action. Howard feels like he's in another film all by himself, tone-wise. Morgan is incredible and his presence is appreciated. Go see him in the film Bull (2020) to feel how incredible he is, but, both him and Hawke could have been dropped from this film and it would have not lost much.

I would have instead preferred more focus put on Shipp's character, as well as the other younger actors in the film like Keean Johnson (Midway and Alita: Battle Angel) who plays Junior, another friend to Blink who's part of his crew to rob the casino.

Rated R for violence, pervasive language, drug content, some sexuality and nudity
Running Time: 2 hrs. and 3 mins.

Available on Netflix.