[SWING LOWE
SWEET CHARIOTE premieres Monday June 24 th at 7:00 pm at Digiplex Solon
Cinema 16. Red carpet festivities begin at 6:30 pm.]
Review by Bob
Ignizio
Chariote (Phillia
Thomas) is a smart young black girl living on Cleveland's East Side.
She's managed to overcome her rough early years with a
good-for-nothing mom (Melissa Thorne) thanks to the love and care of
her grandmother (Tammi Swails). Now she and her two best friends Lily
(Chanel Lewis) and Shannon (Carla Macon) are about to graduate high
school, with Chariote setting her sights on a law degree. But if
Chariote gives in to the romantic advances of neighborhood drug
dealer Ace (Hakeem Sharif), she may wind up needing a lawyer herself
long before she has a chance to become one. Or maybe even worse.
Starting
out not unlike a gender switched BOYZ IN THE HOOD
set in Cleveland, at about the thirty minute mark SWING
LOWE SWEET CHARIOTE begins to
morph into something more along the lines of a gender switched BLACK
CAESAR. Which actually isn't a
bad idea for an urban crime drama, really. But Chariote feels like
such a believable character, and the movie is so filled with
authentic detail, that it in a way it's harder to buy when the movie
shifts gears into urban action territory than if the film had started
off with a more generic opening. Both Thomas and Sharif do good work
in the lead roles, but they still can't sell us on the idea that
Chariote would throw away a bright future for a guy she never seems
to really like. It's actually more believable, given her smarts, when
she starts to become the power behind the throne in Ace's drug
business.
SWING LOWE
is a true low budget indie film as opposed to the $20 million
productions Hollywood considers low budget. None of which is to say
the film looks cheap; in fact, in terms of production values and
cinematography it's quite professional, certainly on a par with the
average drive-in and exploitation movie of the seventies and early
eighties but with a more contemporary style. Where the budget really
starts to show is in the mixed bag casting. Like I said, the two
leads are good, but the supporting cast is all over the map, with
Michael Chastain's over the top performance as a “Mr. Big” type
probably the nadir (although it certainly does make an impression).
So yeah, the
potential was here for something a little more, and a few
performances are rough around the edges. In the end, though, the film
does entertain, and even if the more serious themes take a back seat
to the action, they're still present enough to register. And on top
of all that, you'd be hard pressed to find a movie that's more
Cleveland than this one: It's based on a novel by Clevelander Stella Hall, written for the screen
and directed by Clevelander David C. Snyder, shot in Cleveland (unless
you're one of those people who never leaves the west side, you'll
recognize plenty of locations), and has a cast consisting mostly of Clevelanders (Public Enemy frontman Chuck D being a
notable exception).And hey, at least this movie didn't make its
hometown cranky by causing any traffic jams while it was being made.
2 1/2 out of 4 stars.
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