Gridlock’d
Tupac Shakur’s death in 1996 was such a cultural moment, it’s a bit surprising that “Gridlock’d,” released four months after his death, wasn’t a bigger hit. It should have been, and probably wasn’t because Tupac was seen as a rap icon more than a pop culture one, but I wonder what might have happened if Polygram had tried to take Vondie Curtis-Hall’s directorial debut to Sundance, and the awards circuit, instead of dumping it in theatres in the January after he died. Maybe some buzz could have been built, and it would be better remembered. It deserves to be better remembered, and 23 years later, plays a lot more resonant than it did then.
I haven’t seen a lot of Tupac on screen, but just looking at his work as “Spoon” in this film, I feel like, had he lived, he would be a major talent in films. (He was supposedly up for Mace Windu before he died, so it’s not hard to imagine, and he had already worked with John Singleton in “Poetic Justice.”) There’s so much natural charisma that comes out of his performance in this film that you can’t help but wonder what he would have been like being directed by someone like Spike Lee or Martin Scorsese in the right role. He had effortless screen presence, and it comes through here.
Curtis-Hall’s film is written from his own experiences when he was young. On New Year’s Eve, Spoon and his best friend, Stretch (Tim Roth), are hanging out and getting high with Stretch’s poet/singer girlfriend, Cookie (Thandie Newton), when Cookie ODs. They rush her to the Emergency Room, and, while they’re waiting, they decide to get clean, and get into a detox program. Sounds easy enough, but as they go about their day of trying to do so, they run up against a bureaucracy that makes it harder for them to stay clean than it already is, and that’s not even including the drug boss, the murder, and the police officers they run into along the way.
There’s not a lot of depth in Curtis-Hall’s script- his first- but there’s a lot of honesty in the film that plays as true now as it was in 1997. The plot involves Spoon and Stretch trying desperately to get into detox, but the film also has a lot to say about how the social safety net that is supposed to be in place to help those down on their luck, and those in poverty, often makes it harder for them to do so. Spoon and Stretch are trying to take ownership and responsibility of their lives, and yes, they fuck up at times (like when Stretch tries to pawn a “camcorder” to Curtis-Hall’s character in the film for drug money, and it bites them in the ass), but you can see the desperation they feel in trying to get help at every turn, when they get told misinformation about how easy it is to get on Medicaid, and how they need to be on Medicaid to even be treated. This is part of why I feel like it plays better now- with the wealth gap increasing by the day, this subject is ripe for treatment in American cinema; Curtis-Hall paints a bleak portrait of how it is for the people who struggle the most.
What prevents the film from being a bleak sit, though, is the dark humor Curtis-Hall infuses in the script, and the natural chemistry Roth and Shakur have. It’s hard for Stretch not to fuck up, and Spoon has to do a lot of heavy lifting for both of them to get through this. That Spoon is the responsible one, and Stretch is the one who always seems to make things worse, is one of the best aspects of the film, and how it draws these characters, and the result plays to both actor’s strengths. Whether it’s them spending time with Newton’s Cookie or sitting with their dealer (Bookeem Woodbine) and his pregnant girlfriend (Lucy Liu, already a presence on camera, even in this brief role), or having to place nice with the cops that walk by when Curtis-Hall’s character is trying to get some dope they stole from him, or just sitting in the ER, waiting to get word on Cookie. These guys are engaging protagonists; we may not always agree with how they go about their business, but we want to see them figure out how to improve themselves. I hope people decide to take a look at this film, although you may mourn what we lost in Tupac. He was on his way to being a special screen talent.
