This entry was posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 6:30 am and is filed under D, Drama, Movie Reviews, NEW IN THEATER, independent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Director: Alan Jacobs
Starring: Jessica Romero, Danny Glover, Kate Del Castillo, Emily Rios
I rolled into TO for the last weekend of the 2009 TIFF (Toronto Int’l Film Festival) and went on a whirlwind movie spree, seeing nine movies in two days. Some, like My Son, My Son What Ye Done, were god awful, pretentious art-house junk and others, like Jennifer’s Body, were pretty good, but head and shoulders above the other eight was Down For life. This gritty inner city drama, which is apparently a true story inspired by a New Times article, crackles with realism and the performers don’t seem to be acting at all, but simply living. The action scenes are jarring and seem a lot closer to Youtube than Hollywood, thanks to the skilled direction of little-known director, Alan Jacobs.
Jessica Romero, was cast right off the streets of East Central to play the lead role of Rascal, the streetwise leader of a small women’s wing of a Latino gang. The whole story takes place in a single chaotic day in her violence-filled life. Conflict both inside and outside the gang as well as in the home, on top of a looming deadline for entry to a summer writing program that might be an escape hatch to a better life. The crisp story moves along quickly and eventually takes us a scene so sudden and shocking that viewers seemed to jump back in their seats as one.
Down For Life is a current and raw film made in the vein of such inner city classics as Boyz n The Hood. It is an independent film and may be hard to find, but as the best film of 2009, thus far, it is well worth the effort.
