Caught Up

This is got to be one of the most confusing urban thrillers I have ever seen. A young man did a five year bid after being involved in a bank robbery thanks to his coke-head buddy. Daryl plans were to open a nightclub and had a major set back that sent him to prison because of the bank robbery. But when he got out he hooks up with a fortune teller that maybe change his life around. Though whenever they were together someone was out to kill him. Daryl played by Bokeem Woodbine had only wanted to get his life together so he can get back into his son's life and presume to open a nightclub. Through all the mayhem in the movie he still achieve his goal. Not a bad ending for a hood movie without the star dying.

Gems sometimes crop up in the most surprising places. "Caught Up" provides the pleasures of a well-structured plot, especially the payoff one gets when something brought up earlier means something important (even clever) later, e.g. the identity of the hitman. Combine these tasty plot twists with good acting and good dialogue, and you've got a movie worth staying up to watch on cable

A poorly written urban crime drama that would have worked better as a sketch in HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE, CAUGHT UP stars Bokeem Woodbine as an ex-con trying to go straight. Shortly after his release from prison, he meets Trish (Cynda Williams, whose mediocre performance is in sharp contrast to her impressive work in ONE FALSE MOVE), who's, of all things, a psychic being pursued by an evil Rastafarian from whom she stole a huge diamond. Instead of staying the hell away from this apparently high-maintenance love interest (she's beautiful, you see) and trying to reconnect with his former squeeze, he agrees to help her. Every stereotype and cliché is used, as well as howlingly bad dialogue ("Nobody was waiting for me but a dude named destiny") and the perfunctory hip-hop cameos. This film seems to have been made solely to promote its accompanying soundtrack, but with hardly any rap music included in the movie, what exactly was the point of all this?

A very typical set up - ex-con with a kid, wants to make a new start. The main character's complete lack of bravado makes him an amiable enough lead, but it's not enough to save the film from clunky dialogue, and some clunkier acting. However, there are some cinematically nice moments, and it's worth the rental price just to see Jeffrey Combs' hysterical, and very... memorable... cameo.

I can't believe I've never seen this before. Bokeem Woodbine is great in everything he's in and plays Daryl the main character who can't seem to catch a break. The moral of the story is if you get bad vibes and something is telling you to stay away from certain people you generally should.