Sucker Free City
Product ID: 10904852
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Product Description This original film directed by Spike Lee takes a riveting look at the sedu tive dangerous world and life choices of a diverse group of young people inextricably caught up in the unique gang culture of San Francisco. .com As is the case with many of director Spike Lee's films, especially the better ones, the issue of race is at the center of Sucker Free City, a 2004 pilot for an original Showtime series. In this instance, the tension is both inter- and intra-racial, as Lee and writer Alex Tse focus on three displaced young men from three very separate San Francisco cultural groups: Nick (Ben Crowley), a white kid with a straight day job and a couple of criminal hustles on the side; Keith, aka K-Luv (an exceptional performance by Anthony Mackie), a member of the African-American gang the V-Dubs; and Lincoln (Ken Leung), a junior member of the Chinese Mafia who spends most of his time extorting payoffs from local businesses. That these three and their respective crews will eventually cross paths is inevitable, but it happens in ways both expected (when Nick's family moves into the predominantly black Hunter's Point neighborhood, they're immediately harassed, and worse, by the V-Dubs) and otherwise (K-Luv's aspirations as a CD bootlegger leads to alliances of a sort with both Nick and Lincoln). The cast is sizeable (look for a brief but effective turn by Jim Brown), and while the potential for rampant stereotyping is there, Lee and Tse deftly avoid it; K-Luv, for instance, is clearly unsettled by the violent ways of the V-Dubs, and his palpable inner conflict emerges in some very surprising ways. Gritty and unflinching (the film's violence is considerable but not especially graphic; the profanity is virtually non-stop), Sucker Free City mostly rings true. Alas, Showtime chose not to pick up the series, so one can only wonder what further episodes might have revealed. --Sam Graham
G**Y
An appreciation of the Spike Lee movie Sucker Free City.
If you catch the DVD of Sucker Free City, it comes subtitled in English already, so if your first language is English, don't turn on the subtitles. If you catch the movie Sucker Free City on Showtime TV, you probably should turn on the subs.Of the maybe five or six movies directed by Spike Lee I've watched, this is miles-away my fave; although, I have to admit this favoritism is partly due to the movie's main location being Hunters Point in 1974, and I've lived in and around the San Francisco Bay Area since 1963. And, it's partly due to the fact I could understand almost 100% of the movie's dialog. But, mainly it's due to the fact that this is a very very good movie.I remember reading L.B.T.E.S. (Long Before the End Started - on 9/11) that countries with just two cultures (supposedly like the U.S., having white and African-American cultures) and countries with many cultures (supposedly like the U.S.S.R.) were intrinsically less stable than countries with an "in-between" numbers of cultures (supposedly like many if not most modern European nations). And I remember thinking how American whites have in fact completely destroyed the African component of black Americans' culture over the last 450 years, so America hasn't had the postulated two cultures over that period of time; and, however true the thesis about instability and multiple cultures may be, you can't use America as an example of an unstable two-culture country. America, basically, has always been a one-culture country.Then after realizing that, I got to thinking about how the least assimilated post-Reagan African-Americans ("street" black people) had developed a language that was basically unintelligible to American whites, just as unintelligible as Spanish or any other non-English language, and I decided this development followed not unnaturally from the fact African culture has been effectively destroyed in America.But this understanding made me no more receptive to the new language that post-Reagan, street African-Americans used, and the Spike Lee movies I saw prior to Sucker Free City all required more familiarity with the street African-American language than I'd had time to acquire. However, Sucker Free City is approximately one-third "white" and the DVD's subtitles are excellent, so at last I've been able to experience a Spike Lee movie almost completely like it should be experienced - with full comprehension.To repeat: this is a very good movie.To quote from Wikipedia's synopsis of Sucker Free City: "The film follows three young men as they are drawn into lives of crime. Nick {a white, Ben Crowley} uses his entry-level corporate job to commit credit card fraud and deals drugs on the side. K-Luv {Anthony Mackie} is a member of the "V-Dubs" ("Visitation Valley Mafia"), an African-American street gang. Lincoln {Ken Leung} is a rising figure in the Chinese Mafia. Gentrification forces Nick's family to move out of their home in the Mission District into Hunter's Point where they are harassed by the V-Dubs. K-Luv's side business of selling bootleg compact discs leads him to enlist Nick's help to bootleg CDs and to negotiate a truce with Lincoln. Lincoln conducts an affair with his boss' daughter Angela {T.V. Carpio}, a Stanford student engaged to a medical student classmate."The DVD-movie is a shortening of a series planned for TV, and it really moves. Still and all, it holds together extremely well. The high-point of the threatened violence for me was a confrontation between the V-Dubs and the Chinese Mafia on a basketball court in Chinatown in San Francisco.In this scene on a basketball court, Anthony Mackey explains the facts of life to Ken Leung, to wit, that any gang war fought between the Chinese Mafia and the V-Dubs will be fought in Chinatown, not in Hunters Point; or impliedly, H.P. is already a waste land, whereas Chinatown depends on tourists and "business as usual" and would be enormously adversely impacted by a gang war while H.P. would be essentially unaffected. Leung gets the point: compared to street African-Americans, Chinatown Chinese are, like, liquor-running, Italian-businessmen during Prohibition, if racism historically had confined them to small geographical areas within large American cities.The high point of the movie's actual violence, for me, was the fatal confrontation between Ben Crowley and Darris Love in a public bathroom; although a previous, surprise execution of an African-American child was also extremely chilling.Do see this movie. It's very good and it's available at Netflix. It does not disappoint.
J**N
gangsta
good gangsta movie but funny
C**N
This is a great movie, that shows a lot of detail about ...
This is a great movie, that shows a lot of detail about how life can be in different parts of San Francisco.
C**S
Too Deep Fa' Dem
Too deep for cable to follow through with their agreement with Spike Lee to make it into a series. See why...
A**R
Five Stars
Been looking for this flick for a minute..
B**9
Fantastic
This movie is great! Gritty underbelly sort of story. Typical Spike Lee "real life" story played by guys you believe. Not a happy ending kind of movie but well worth the watch!
A**R
Do not buy from this person
I was robbed dvd was not in case and factory seal was broken
F**Y
Five Stars
Item is as expected...thanks
T**Y
Ottimo
Ottimo grazie
P**L
Five Stars
Love this movie. Too bad the show never took off as it had so much promise.
B**N
Five Stars
great product
S**Y
hard to follow and it put me to sleep
This film is all over the place. I fell asleep with this one
W**E
Five Stars
very much under-rated spike lee flick
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3 weeks ago
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