Twelve aka Charm City Kings (2020)

(On Cable TV, October 2020) In many ways, Charm City Kings is a very familiar story about a young man from disadvantaged circumstances measuring the easy pickings from a life of crime versus the harder payoffs of going straight. There’s been plenty of similar films, such as A Bronx Story or Boyz n the Hood. This one distinguishes itself early on with some motorcycle stunting, as it introduces us to a black boy whose brother was killed in a police raid and who idolizes his motorcycle skills. Getting a motorcycle is the ultimate goal—everything else will follow. Torn between the influences of a friendly police officer and that of a local hoodlum, our protagonist has to decide what path he’s going to take. Cue romantic subplot, overwhelmed single mom, dubious friends and so on. It’s a familiar story, sure, but executed with some deftness—the motorcycle elements make some moments move faster than comparable films. The rest is executed well enough, although my empathy for the protagonist fell off a cliff at some point after a spectacularly dumb decision—if he’s going to rush into trouble after so many warnings, why should I care about what happens to him? Consequently, the ending wasn’t as satisfying as I would have hoped for—I simply wasn’t rooting for him, and thought that he’d revert to crime at the slightest opportunity. But Charm City Kings is still not a bad film—there’s some joy in seeing new young talents brought together to produce a result like this, and the more voices taking a look at America from other perspectives the better.