An alternately entertaining, ludicrous, and tedious modern-day update of "a man of odd circumstance, a victim of ghetto demands." The positive: there are a few truly exceptional actors in the cast, notably Jason Mitchell (as protagonist Priest's chief assistant) and Michael Kenneth Williams (as his mentor and cocaine supplier), and they lend charisma and gravitas to the proceedings. The film would benefit from more scenes with Williams. Hip-hop superstar Future, who also serves as a producer alongside Joel Silver, provides an appropriately aggressive and hypnotic wall-to-wall assortment of R&B, trap, and, briefly, retro soul. The not-so-positive: the film feels quite long at roughly two hours. It verges on being dull at times, which is particularly problematic for a film promising propulsive swagger. The issue may stem from a surplus of conflicts: Priest versus a rival Atlanta gang, Priest versus a Mexican cartel, Priest versus corrupt police. They never coalesce into a single storm of tension, but rather compete for dominance in the plot, and each is tidily resolved in a row at the end. In the lead role, baby-faced Trevor Jackson cuts a striking figure on a physical level, clad as he is in leather with gravity-defying hair, but he is otherwise a rather sleepy and bland screen presence. He certainly never registers as hardened or tormented, so the character's obligatory longing to leave drugs and violence behind feels deeply inauthentic. I also expected more visual flair from Director X, a music-video mainstay who has crafted promotional clips for, among others, Drake, Jay-Z, and Kendrick Lamar. Other than an introductory tracking shot through a nightclub and a few Michael Mann-esque images of cars racing through the city at night, the film is a rather flat visual experience. And then there are the notes of absurdity and eccentricity which pop up throughout despite the film's general tendency toward the humorless. A few of these are inspired: a climactic car chase pointedly ends with the destruction of a Confederate monument, and OutKast's Big Boi is amusing in the supporting role of a lecherous, unscrupulous mayor. Others are painful: I could never not roll my eyes at the aforementioned rival gang. The least menacing criminal element in recent memory, they earnestly call themselves the "Snow Patrol" (if I lay here...if I just lay here...), and indeed everything they own is white, from cars to clothes to machine guns. And then there is the sex scene, a leering and lengthy ménage à trois in the shower which is perhaps modestly titillating in a 13-years-old-and-watching-Cinemax-at-1am sense, but also feels bizarrely and indulgently shoehorned in.

This movie was decent. It's way too long and it gets really ridiculous in the second half once the corrupt cops and the cartel subplots are introduced, but I was pretty entertained throughout.


C+