A young couple, a black girl and white guy, move in to a house in the hills of LA. Unfortunately for them, their next door neighbour is a cop who has a problem with mixed race couples. An escalating war of annoyances ensues.
The biggest question this movie brings up? What was the point of that? It’s message seems to either be all black guys are racist if a white guy takes one of their women OR all cops are pricks. And that’s it.
The plot kind of skips ahead a lot too. It’s not a taught thriller, it’s a barely able to bother paying attention thriller. There’s a big of development with Samuel L Jackson’s (the cop) bad relationship with his kids, but then they fuck off half way through so that’s wasted. And there’s no real reason given for his thinly veiled racism, which would be fine if it was slowly revealed and better hidden, and then then give a reason. Something they wouldn’t have done if it was a white racist. Though they wouldn’t have made the film in that case.
And it suffers badly from the characters not saying obvious shit syndrome. Patrick Wilson never says “oh, Able did this” or “but I’m not that guy dude”. Its something that annoys me a lot in films, no one ever asks a second time for an explanation or talks in a realistic way leaving contrived tension…
The performances are decent enough though. Jackson is down right scary sometimes in this, in a “I’m gonna rip your head off, buddy” way. The buddy being overly friendly. Wilson is fine, Kerry Washington is fine as his wife. But the relationship kind of falls apart in an unrealistic way over time. Sure there’s tensions, but not the tensions that there should be.
It’s a bad TV movie thriller thrown up on the big screen before the script was finished. I’d just skip it, there’s plenty of crazy ass Jackson elsewhere.
Next up: Heat
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