Next Day Air

This sometimes funny sometimes serious comedy was more suspense than anything. This was a Guy Ritchie clone about money and drugs, and it was all put into motion by one slacker of a delivery guy.

Leo (Donald Faison), slacker and weedhead extraordinaire for Next Day Air, delivered a package to the wrong apartment. The package was ten kilos of pure cocaine. The recipients, Brody (Mike Epps) and Guch (Wood Harris), just so happened to be hustlers and thieves, so they more than welcomed the mistaken delivery. They would simply sell the product to Shavoo (Omari Hardwick), Brody's cousin who was known to move weight. The only problem with this plan is that the stuff belonged to Bodega Diablo (Emilio Rivera) and he wasn't going to merely forget about his ten kilograms of snow.

All of the events of this movie occurred in a 48 hour period. The movie was light and breezy half the time, and the other half of the time it was like a hard nosed drug movie. I think that was its biggest flaw. Commit to one side or the other. I would've preferred full comedy because that's how it billed itself and that's how it started. The casting was good for that with Mike Epps, Donald Faison, Mos Def, and Darius McCrary. All of them are very familiar with comedy.

You need to have a good background of not only watching movies but interacting with diverse people to understand the story and humuor behind each narrative.

Of course it tries really hard to be funny (and fails quite a few times), but it still seems likable, because it tries to be different. Plus it seems more coherent than some other "gangsta" movies (though that does not mean that much now, does it). The actors at hand, try very hard and sometimes convince and are quite funny.

All in all, the action and the (thin) plot move forward nicely enough. Nothing great, but OK. And while you have glimpses of violence here and there, it's more a comedy than anything else. Still the ending might throw a lot of people of, for being so different, than anything we would expect from a movie like that. But then again, maybe that's exactly what we would/should expect ...

this movie was a very big disappointment. when i read about it the first time i thought it could be quite funny. the synopsis suggested a crime comedy mix with some nice twists and plenty to laugh about. but i was totally mistaken.

the plot had no real dynamic and all the plot twists were not surprising at all, if you can even call them twists. add to that a bunch of stereotype characters with no depth and personality and you can imagine how captivated i was by this movie. i thank god that the total absence of good jokes and comedy didn't distract me form experiencing this absence of emotion in this great void of boredom.

don't get me wrong. i didn't want to puke during the movie or something like that. it was only after i resurfaced from this sea of dullness that i realized how much of a big waste of time this movie was.

If this had not been played so broad, it could be a Sam Rami, A SIMPLE PLAN, or even a Cohen Bros. film, NO COUNTRY, or even FARGO! It even has a little Hitchcock in the script, but the acting is so very broad there is almost no other way to take it. It is a pretty good script that was taken specific way. Strange, I wouldn't mind seeing a remake same director, same actors, but a totally different take on the same material, and this time straight. Anyway I think the film is fun to watch because some of the actors are really good and the productions values are descent. You got to wonder if the studio as opposed the director had the last word on this one.