Bomb the System

amazing movie. i used to write but the fort got way to hot with the vandal squad crap, but this movie made me bust out the Krylon and fat caps and go out that very night. not only an amazing Graf doc. but also a damn good plot that anyone who has ever held a chisel tip can fully appreciate. it is a very real view of life as a writer, always on the run. despite their attempts to silence us we will be heard loud and clear. very moving and compelling.

if u view Graf as vandalism, don't watch this movie...

or better yet go out Bombin' and feel the realness of life on the run...

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.

"A graffiti writer doesn't expect to get caught, like a cop never expects to get shot". That's one of many phrases to live by for a group of graffiti artists, or "bombers", in Brooklyn. BOMB THE SYSTEM, which I knew next to nothing about going in, is a heady, energetic film about a particular subculture. Can't say I really care all that much about how graffiti gets where it gets or those responsible, but I can't deny how well made the movie is. The hip-hop music, an old-school mix by El P (whoever), the editing style, the bleached out color palate -- every storytelling device at Director Adam Bhala Lough's disposal is perfectly suited, if just a tad overused, to the material. We're in good hands, here.

Blest (Mark Webber, hardly recognizable from the lifeless STORYTELLING) has bombed since he can remember. Since his brother died doing the same. Jacking spraypaint cans -- because a true artist never pays -- running from the law, leaving his mark on the sides of buildings and trucks, his sights set on the Brooklyn Bridge one of these days. He and his gang hang out, smoke pot, get drunk and appreciate "the colors, the blends and the smell of paint". These guys keep regular day jobs, the majority of them anyway, and do their thing at night, maintaining rivalries over territory with other gangs, searching for that one spot nobody has touched and that'll bring them a little slice of immortality.

Blest understands his scene. "If I'm gonna risk going to jail, it's gonna be for bombin' and nothing else," he explains to his girlfriend, a fellow writer named Alex (the cute as hell Jaclyn DeSantis). And, it's not like he doesn't have options in life: Alex offers an open invitation for Blest to join her and go cross country; his own crew is asking him to step up and take more initiative right where he is, and he has just been accepted to an art institute. Added to which, maybe he's ready to give it all up for good; "our pieces keep gettin' buffed as soon as we paint them". Graffiti is temporary. After a while, what's the point?

BOMB THE SYSTEM is kind of sketchy from a plot standpoint (it's got that beat of everyday life, so nothing really happens), and it has more of a political agenda than the desire to tell a story, per se. But, I love the philosophising in Lough's screenplay; his dialogue is very urban, profane and also quite literate. I love the way these guys talk to one another. A corrupt police officer tracking Blest and his gang's activity has a particularly objective way of thinking: he doesn't have a problem with prostitution but doesn't want to see them walking the street, either. Same deal with graffiti. If art is what you are doing, do it at home. Want the services of a hooker, call an 800 number and have one come to your home. Discretion is key. While that doesn't make the cop a fully realized character, it's nice to hear someone with an opinion express it clearly. Which is pretty much the case with this entire cast. Noone gets the proper developmental treatment, but at least they have ideas.

The movie doesn't have a beating heart beneath its shiny surface, but what a surface. I hope Lough learns the beauty of the sustained shot; he's too smart not to. SYSTEM is overly busy for its own visual good, at times. An inventive exercise in style. Tone poetry, if you will.

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.

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.