Artist: DVD ReviewTitle: Game: Chronicles Of The Street (DVD)Rating: 2 1/2 StarsReviewed by: Maiya Norton
Any documentary starring “hustlers, ballers and gangsters” sprinkled with a cameo from Pimpin’ Ken and Big Slick has the potential to be really fly or flop. The Shoot II Films Production, Game: Chronicles of the Street (Shoot II Films) weaves in and out of the pressure of drug trafficking in cities like Houston and Atlanta. While refreshingly providing an alternate perspective to the hustling tales of Northeastern geography, Game has the right stage but the wrong actors. We’re talking Paid in Full meets pitiful. The featured hustlers had little charisma, which prompted the curtain to close on your stimulation.
Instead of recycling the same plot many hustling films do, this documentary explicitly mentions the consequences that lead to the shooting, paralyzation, jail time and substance abuse. Rather than glorifying their own shoot-em-up-bang-bang, the storytellers were honest and authentic in sharing their pros and cons of the drug grind. Adrain, an older woman now clean from a crack cocaine addiction works in research marketing and with Motherland Inc. Prior to ironing out her life she’d been blindfolded, beaten, and raped as a prostitute and self-proclaimed “outlaw.”
A wheelchair-bound Mudd highlighted being inhumanely abused by officers as a result of his drug charges. He spent time in the penitentiary obtaining his degree and is now working on a book. For those that are considering getting their feet wet in pharmaceutical sales, precautionary mandatory sentence minimums flashed across the screen before a new story was told. The film seems to have been made with good intent, however, the most powerful points were deeply masked in thick accents and poor sound quality.
There was no need for 7 storytellers in the short film. Only three of the bunch were actually emotional and compelling, while the others gave pointless input about what interested them in check fraud, pimpin’ or selling drugs. The music in the background coupled with the car scenes that reminded you of a bad No-Limit video was often distracting. In what seemed like a long hour your attention span was like a ping-pong bouncing back and forth between less than exciting contributions. As quoted from Pimpin Ken in Game, “Here’s some instructions, go out there and get to productions.” For the next documentary perhaps Terrell Taylor and Corey Garret won’t jump the gun, literally, and will dig a little deeper.
