Gas (2004/United
States)
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: D Film: C+
The quest to bring about a cycle of memorable dramas about
African American life is still being attempted, but it still has yet to take
hold. Veteran television director Henry
Chan takes on his first theatrical feature film with Gas (2004, one of
two films in the same year with the same title), in which the death of a gas
station owning father forces two brothers (Flex Alexander and Khalil Kain) to
have to face each other.
It turns out that an event in their past have set them to
not be speaking with each other for years, as Damian (Alexander) has left the
neighborhood to have white-collar business success. Mookie (Kain) has stayed behind with the station and has a better
idea of what is going on and that Damian’s by-the-book business ideas are not
going to be as easy as one side fits all.
Joining them are an assortment of likable and sometimes interesting
“regulars” in the neighborhood and the film has its share of comedy.
The film is also a bit predictable and melodramatic, while
the directing is sometimes problematic, as Chan’s transition from videotaped TV
to 35mm film is not as good as it might have been has he come out of the days
when filming was being used more often.
The acting is also sometimes mixed, though the low budget likely did not
allow too many reshoots, so that is negligible. Art Evans, model-turned-actor Tyson Beckford and Rapper Sticky
Fingaz are among the more familiar faces in a film with good intentions from
the Mike Haran/Mark Swinton screenplay.
Gas may run into some rough road, but it does not try to run on
empty, making it an interesting film to catch.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image beats the awful
pan & scan flip side in image area and performance. Cinematographer Don Morgan really does keep
it real, not using any digital, which is such a relief and the result is a
nice-looking film. The actors are made to
look good in a script where all the characters have dignity. The theatrical sound format is not listed in
the credits, but this DVD has a decent Dolby Digital 5.1 mix for a
dialogue-based film. The music and
sound effects benefit the most. There
are no extras, but the film runs 90 minutes and is ambitious when compared to
most of the junk we have seen lately.
- Nicholas Sheffo
