Bomb the System

Much like the recent "Lords of Dogtown", "Bomb the System" is a film spotlighting a semi- underground subculture, in this case graffiti writers, wrapped around a narrative plot. Somewhat similar to "Kids", the story follows a young writer, "BLEST" as he tags, hangs out with friends, smokes pot, parties and tags again. This would all work fine as a minimalist, loosely structured, spectator piece, but instead, the filmmakers throw the dramatic storyline arc into the mix about a crooked cop and his ex-writer partner, which makes the whole thing seem artificial. Besides this major flaw, the film also suffers from over-acting, un-motivated hyper editing techniques and un-authentic slang dialouge. As an artist myself, I would suggest to neophytes looking to learn more about the culture to explore documentaries and check out websites. It's too bad that this film doesn't work, because the characters, like the filmmakers, seem to have a spiritual passion for the art of graffiti. The character Alex says in one scene something along the lines of while graffiti is aesthetically pleasing and stylistic, it the end, it stands for nothing. This particular line echos my thoughts and feelings about the film itself.

Just finished watching the movie, and I gotta say...It was fresh. Had me from start to finish. I was immersed. I felt as though I was running through Brooklyn with the characters. As soon as I finished it I had an overwhelming urge to go to throwup some work.

"Bomb the system" had great acting, really good filming, decent script, and some nice "tags"(they don't dwell on any of the pieces long enough unfortunately). My only complaints were: the girlfriend, she was too stereo typical, and anti-captilist. Also the lack of an in depth look at actual street art(graffiti). All in all the I loved this movie, and would recommend it to anyone, whether they are into graff or not.

8 out of 10 stars

Watch it now!

I went into this movie thinking it would be a non-cliché, modern portrayal of graffiti culture in NY... only to see in the first 2 minutes, a guy Break dancing with a boombox, in front of a muraled wall. Maybe it was a flashback of the main character as a kid... but it seems that would only make sense if the lead character was 30yrs old.

I tried to give this movie a chance. But there were just too many things that bugged me... The writing for instance, all the graffiti terminology was incorrectly used. When a graffiti writer goes "Bombing" he does not go out and do full illegal murals. Nobody even mentions doing "fill-ins" or "throwups" which are the most commonly used terms/acts by graf-writers. They call them "pieces" in the movie, which is completely wrong. Those are just some examples...

It became pretty obvious that the filmmakers knew little or Nothing about graffiti. Just because you know about Sane & Smith, and heard a couple chase stories from your NYU buddy, isn't enough to go out and make a significant Graffiti movie. There is some "cool" cinematography in this, which isn't bad. But that's it. Storyline is similar to the likes of Wild Style or Beat Street (a hip hop love story). But even those movies were made with less pretension than this.

Ignore what you've heard bad about this movie. Some writers might be upset that the movie doesn't go too into detail about actually putting graffiti up or saying that it's using incorrect terminology but those people completely missed what's good about the movie.

First off, the actual presentation, filming, camera movement, effects, etc. are all extremely artistic and original. The entire movie just makes you feel empathetic for the characters. The atmosphere, the scenery, all of it. Interludes between scenes of the main character always running, just running away.

The music is good too. It's all done by El-P, for anyone familiar with Def-Jux.

The whole movie though, it's just amazing... So many people overlooked this. Everything is just done so brutally realistic, how the way characters react and think, how life really can just be ****ed up. It's a powerful movie and the ending is the best part. (be warned though... it's sad...)

I just finished the film, and boy, it was not good at all. I've never seen any other movie about graffiti, and yet everything in this one seems clichéd. Many of the characters are not believable, for example the central villain is a "bad cop" who is just laughable in the way he is portrayed as pure evil. And it just DRAGS for about twenty minutes two thirds of the way through (and the movie is only 90 minutes long!). I almost went to see this last fall at the local film festival, but the schedule didn't work out, and I'm glad I saved my $10. If this was a film made by a group of high school students I would applaud them, but for a professional film this is just a pretentious waste of time.