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Mink-coat-wearing strippers work the pole beneath hailstorms of dollar bills. Youngblood Priest, the fabulously coiffed cocaine kingpin portrayed by Trevor Jackson in Sony Pictures’ upcoming gangster thriller Superfly, plies his lucrative trade in a stylized version of modern-day Atlanta. A Sony Columbia release.Trevor Jackson in Superfly Photo: Quantrell D. MPAA Rating: R for violence and language throughout, strong sexuality, nudity, and drug contentĬast: Trevor Jackson, Jason Mitchell, Lex Scott Davis, Andrea Londo, Michael Kenneth Williams, Kaalan Walker, Big Boi, Big Bank Black and Esai MoralesĬredits:Directed by Director X, script by Alex Tse . This “Superfly” is all pompadour and clothes and cars. He had the hair long before he had the Benjamins. The grunge and edge are scrubbed off the city, and with them, the desperation that made this bad guy who made The Man play by His Rules so appealing, is lost. It’s just that whatever points the script wants to score on murder-by-police, African American affluence of the “any means necessary” variety and the like are undercut by the shiny surface of all this. Jackson’s good in the action moments and there’s presence in other scenes. No, the star isn’t reduced to that - set dressing. The mentor/pupil thing with Williams gets a flashback or two, the menage a trois gets an explicit shower and sex scene and the perfunctory blunders and betrayals - drive-bys, drawling cops ( Jennifer Morrison of “How I Met Your Mother”) looking for their cut - and “surprise” twists we see coming a mile off aren’t remotely as dazzling as the set dressing. It’s all pretty to look at, but the sheen comes at the expense of character development among the most interesting players in the cast. And we’ve seen variations of those “dealt with” scenes in a dozen other, better movies.
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Naturally, there’s a Mexican drug lord ( Esai Morales really should start turning these down at this stage) that must be dealt with. All he needs, and say the Drug Deal Movie Cliche with me, “is one LAST JOB.”Įverybody jokes about Priest’s “pretty hair” as he travels among the city’s hip, high and mighty, or downlow and fur-covered. That turns Priest’s thoughts from making himself “Superfly,” and toward escape. He’s a Snow Patrolman out to stir things up. Save for the punk footsoldier JuJu ( Kaalan Walker). Their Grille King overlord, Q ( Big Bank Black) leaves Scatter, Priest & Co. That’s probably because the Snow Patrol, a preening, showboating gang obsessed with white leather, white cars, white sneakers, white furs and white guns, is the designer dominant drug supplier to the ATL. Youngblood Priest (Jackson) and his lieutenant Eddie ( Jason Mitchell) have kept their records clean, despite years of lucrative apprenticeship to Scatter ( Michael Kenneth Williams). This is a world of dueling dealers all trying to stay under the radar of the corrupt local police.
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It’s just that Jackson can’t carry himself in a way that sells the swagger. He has the trappings of Cool Gangsta - a Lexus supercar, two women who live with him in a menage a trois ( Lex Scott Davis, Andrea Londo) and the easy respect of all who deal with him. But he’s a bit young to be this top dog in drugs, and the actor’s not quite there in terms of nailing this amoral Robin Hood of Coke’s charisma. Trevor Jackson of TV’s “Grown-ish” and “American Crime,” may be pretty - and we’re not just talking about that styled-to-the-max hair. If you’ve plunged into one party where overdressed drug dealers are flinging Dead Presidents into the air, you’ve plunged into them all.Īnd the title character. Characters blurt out exposition, trite situations are forced into the proceedings, simply due to script requirements.
#THE MOVIE SUPERFLY FREE#
The Alex Tse (“Sucker Free City,” “Watchmen”) script crackles with quotable cinematic street slang - “Get those commas up” (raise more money), “You almost got GOT” (killed), Get that BASS out’you voice!” and “I won’t go NOWHERE where the ‘J’s’ are silent!” (south of the border).īut that script wallows in “Scarface” homages and sequences to the point where when you see the beginning of the scene, you already know how it’s going to pay off. exotic firearms and elaborate hairstyles highlight a remake that’s a shiny Director X (Julien Christian Lutz) Atlanta updating of what’s regarded as a Blaxploitation classic.
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There’s a high tone sheen to the new “Superfly,” a gloss of drug-trade affluence that we haven’t seen in a movie since “Scarface.”ĭesigner clothes, fur-trimmed pimpwear, mansions, supercars.