Dir: Vondie Curtis-Hall
Year: 1997
Cast: Tupac Shakur, Tim Roth, Thandie Newton
Genre: Drama/Comedy/Crime
Cert: 18
Gridlock'd follows two junkie best friends in a jazz band, Spoon & Stretch, trying to kick their heroin habit on January 1st, after their singer and roommate, Cookie, overdoses on New Years Eve. Trying to get into rehab proves extremely difficult sending them all over town looking for a way to kick. They decide to ring up some cash and get ONE last bump. They do so by filling boxes with bricks and selling them as stereos, an unhappy customer and violent gangster, D-Reper wont stop till he takes down the two men for ripping him off. They show up at their dealers house, Koolaid. He lives with his girlfriend Cee-Cee, They do their final bump and are on their way. As they leave, D-Reper passes them on the stairwell, nervous they walk quicker letting D-Reper realise it's them, they run scared from gunshots to safety. A few hours pass and they decide that one more bump couldn't hurt, they return to Koolaid's only to discover that him and Cee-Cee have been killed, most definitely by D-Reper. They leave but bump into some cops and narrowly avoid being caught with heroin. As they were the only people near the scene of the crime, they're prime suspects, sending all police after them as well as D-Reper trying to take them down.
I thought this was a hilarious and bizarre crime-comedy. It didn't have much action but it certainly didn't need any. Both Stretch and Spoon are completely likable from the get-go even though they're both addicts, though Cookie was just irritating, thankfully not much of her in it. I thought the pacing was perfect and didn't feel myself losing interest at any time. There was a lot of odd but interesting techniques used in this, the most notable is any time a character see's somebody they do NOT want to see, it tracks up to their face really fast in a Looney Toons type way. That being one of many hilarious moments in the movie, Tim Roth did brilliantly in this I think, he got the look of a jonesing heroin addict completely down and didn't do too bad on the American accent. He did slip up now and then when he said fuck but it's not too noticeable. Tupac also was very good in this, he realistically portrayed a level-headed addict, obviously not too level headed cause, well he's an addict isn't he. This was his final movie unfortunately before being killed and was released a year after his death. He hasn't done many films but he's usually good in them when he does. Besides Bullet, that was a heap of shit. Major let down, With Micky Rourke and Tupac I thought "What could go wrong?", Everything it seems. Anyway I'm trailing off, Thandie Newton was good in this too, despite being head wrecking she still played her part well. Vondie Curtis-Hall was quite good too though he had very little dialogue. I found it interesting that he credited himself as the bad guy in his own film as well as writing some of the music. Stewart Copeland did the score too, He seems to do them for odd movie choices. He did Rumble Fish and that was some weird shit... I think the one thing I didn't like was Tupac doing the shittiest ever miming of bass playing, looked awful but that's a very VERY minor thing. This had a sort of, Midnight Run-esque feel without the characters hating each other, but I think fans of that will certainly love this. Obviously it's not perfect but it's a really entertaining comedy and it's unfortunate it's not better known. It's one I highly recommend to Crime/Comedy type fans.
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