Rating: 3/5
Fontaine (John Boyega) is a drug dealer in a neighborhood called The Glen. He has his schedule — lift weights, buy a lotto ticket, pour some of his 40 for the old guy outside the gas station.
Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) is a pimp, and he’s fighting with one of his girls, Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris). He also got some drugs from Fontaine and hasn’t paid him back.
Fontaine goes to confront him and shake him up. Yo-Yo is leaving as he arrives. But when he gets outside, a rival drug dealer named Isaac shoots and kills him.
The next day, Fontaine wakes up, having no memory of anything happening. Outside the gas station, he sees a guy bleeding and stumbling. A black car drives up and picks up the guy, peeling off.
He goes to Slick Charles to collect, and Charles feels like he’s seeing a ghost. Fontaine thinks he’s full of shit, but Yo-Yo wasn’t too far gone when it happened, and she said she spotted the car that did it.
She takes them to the car, and Charles tells her it isn’t the car. Instead, it’s the black car he saw earlier.
They go into the house to confront whoever owns the car, and shit gets weird.
The movie is a fun puzzler as Fontaine, Slick Charles, and Yo-Yo try to figure out what’s happening.
The title tells you something, but it’s nowhere near the complete story.
Everyone gives stellar performances, especially Boyega, who has a lot of wildly different emotional beats to hit.
It’s the emotional core of the movie that keeps it working. Although the plot loses coherence in the end, it remains enjoyable from start to finish.
This is a solid debut film. I look forward to seeing what Juel Taylor does next.