First Time Felon

This TV movie is a bleak but insightful look at how a young black American copes with and ultimately benefits from being sent to a Boot Camp instead of prison. I did enjoy this movie as it took us into the dark and depressing life of a young African American but it could have been so much better. I would have liked the relationship with the two gang Bangers to have been explored a little bit more and we could also have done without the slushy sentimental bit in the middle of the film.

I had never heard of the actor Omar Epps and I was impresssed with him in the lead role. Over all a good movie. 7 out of 10.

I thought that this would be another preachy movie about black kids in jail and all their problems. I was wrong. This is about black kids will all sorts of problems in and out of jail but it is done very tightly and kept up my interest throughout. Omar Epps is getting a lot of well deserved credit for his acting but my thumbs up goes to the director Charles S. Dutton who I would like to see do other films. The music with the end credits was beautiful and sounded like the high class music that you hear with much bigger budget movies. I recommend that everyone see this movie once. You will not regret it.

This will be my first comment posting due to the fact that this is first time I felt the need to do so. I caught this movie somewhere towards the beginning and within 10 minutes it had pulled me in to the point where I could not step away. At first I thought it was going to be a "prison movie" but turned out to be so much more. When the boot camp sequence ended the movie just got better and better. Omar Epps was tremendous in this movie and actually had me caring about the character ,which never happens to me to the point that it did here. I felt that I was watching someones life story and not fiction,and it turned out I was right after signing on here. Omar made this movie very believable and I would recommend you see this movie. I will watch it again.

Greg Yance finds himself busted for drugs and is sentenced to five years without parole . At his trial he is given a choice between serving his sentence in a tough penitentiary or to be sent to a tough boot camp

As soon as the opening sequence rolled I came on to this page only to find it's a TVM . Oh dear not doubt a PG cert , a sort of disease of the week movie for homeboys . Quickly it became clear this was a HBO production with graphic language . The fact is I'm a big fan of HBO drama OZ and the first fifteen minutes played out like that classic show as Greg Yance finds himself quite literally having to fight for his life in an uncaring and brutal prison system

Yance is given a choice of staying in the state pen or shipping out to a tough boot camp . You do think that in that case we'll be watching a sort of civilian version of FULL METAL JACKET . Rules are rules and somewhat strangely the rules of the camp involve no swearing . This means the film is conspicuous by missing a Sgt Hartman type character full of highly quotable foul mouthed language

FIRST TIME FELON is certainly more enjoyable and impressive than a lot of TVMs I've seen and his competently directed by Charles S Dutton and competently acted by a mainly black cast . The problem is that the early sequences are so impressive the rest of the film doesn't sustain the hard hitting drama the story is capable of and becomes a bit too preachy the more it continues

I almost stopped watching when the inmates graduated but I hung in there and realized this movie was going beyond the cliches and attempting to show what few choices a gang banger with a record has. Very realistic.