Straight Out of Brooklyn

A beleaguered family feverishly tries to get out intact from New York's notorious Red Hook projects in this micro-budget debut film from writer-director-star Matty Rich. The director deserves attention for simply getting this unrelentingly bleak movie created and then released (as has been well documented, the then-19-year-old Rich had to gather the thinnest of shoestring budgets from friends and various grants); but the genuine passion behind this gangland drama can't disguise the fact that what's being presented here isn't particularly new or innovative. (A much more facile treatment of a similar subject can be found in Boaz Yakin's stunning Fresh.) Despite the impressively gritty locations, honestly pessimistic worldview, and George T. Odom's raw performance as a haplessly abusive patriarch, one can't quite shake the unfortunate feeling that this is a film more notable for its backstory than what actually made it up onto the screen. Rich would later go on to make the considerably more polished, Disney-funded coming-of-age story The Inkwell. --Andrew Wright