One of the things that bugs me about indie film-making is that the wrong people make it to step two. Nick Gomez surely should have been able to do more work than "Illtown" and "New Jersey Drive" after finishing this well-crafted, if choppy, urban tale. I liked "New Jersey Drive" a lot, so I guess Nick's getting his recognition through "The Sopranos" at the moment. And why is Mr. Green still only playing psychos and tiny little bit parts, apart from his brilliant work in "Clean Shaven"? At least Adam Trese went on to "Palookaville"!
Ok, so that's more of a rant than a review, and I'll cut to the chase:
If you liked "Bottle Rocket", "Palookaville", or "A Bronx Tale", see this film.
It's an old story, but I'll tell it again:
Guys from bad neighborhoods, against whom the deck is pretty well stacked, get some better-than-usual goods to sell. And sell them they must, under less than ideal circumstances, leading to all sorts of fun and frolic, in a very non-comedic sense. Greene, Trese, Falco, and Schulze stand out. Saul Stein is quite creepy as the face of the "new mob".
This sort of film appeals to me more in its American genre than the current British versions of this story ("London Kills Me", "Lock, Stock", "Twin Town", and "Trainspotting") as the Scots/Welsh/Home Counties vision of petty crime has a heavily injected fantasy slant absent in four American flix cited in my discussion.
Also, these petty-street-crime films are probably (with the exception of John Sayles) one of the few windows into American poverty available in US film right now. The scene in "Laws of Gravity" between minor criminal Frankie and Greene's screen spouse Denise (Edie Falco) on the nature of life and work is brilliant.
lordwhorfin says, go ye forth and rent.
