L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, July 13, 2006 7:00 pm
“Waist Deep” is an urban action fantasy — a film that could never happen in real life but is so propulsively put together it manages to be effective and, in places, even gripping.
Tyrese Gibson, who is turning out to have a strong screen presence, stars as O2, a guy just out of prison who promises his son, Junior (Henry Hunter Hall), that he’ll never again leave him.
That proves to be a short-lived assurance. Pulling up to a stoplight at a crowded intersection, O2 is distracted by a sexy woman sashaying across the street and trying to sell him some stolen clothes. While he’s watching her, O2 is carjacked and the thieves speed off in his convertible with Junior in the back seat.
O2 gives chase and winds up shooting up most of the neighborhood, but he can’t catch the car or the bad guys. Who he does catch is the woman, Coco (Meagan Good), who admits she was part of the carjacking team and decides to help O2 get Junior back.
The problem is, he’s being held by sadistic gang leader Meat (The Game), who demands a healthy ransom. So O2 and Coco go Bonnie and Clyde to get the cash, starting a downpour of crime and bullets that drives the second half of the picture.
Very little in “Waist Deep” is original. But actor-turned-director Vonnie Curtis Hall revs everything up, making this a genre picture that delivers exactly what it promises. There’s no great depth or meaning here, but there is enough of a sense of place and time that the milieu resonates rather than seeming Hollywood artificial.
It helps that The Game is scarily realistic as the nasty gangster and that there’s some chemistry between Gibson and Good. And the story line of saving a kid never goes out of style.
That said, “Waist Deep” is full of impossibilities. The cops, who evidently sent O2 to jail earlier, are nowhere to be seen until they turn up to play a major role in the film’s truly unbelievable ending. Larenz Tate, who plays O2’s cousin Lucky, is one of those odd, only-in-the-movies characters who is streetwise one minute and an incompetent fool the next. And it’s really hard to believe that Coco would go from being a gang girl to helping the guy she just scammed as quickly and easily as it happens here.
But none of that really matters. “Waist Deep” presents itself as a very violent action film and, at least on that count, it delivers.
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or at kwolgamott@journalstar.com.