True to the Game (2017)

(On TV, October 2021) Eh, what a mess. There’s something very familiar to much of True to the Game, as a young woman falls for a bad-boy drug dealer and gets caught in the crossfire when gang wars turn hot. But it’s in the way it’s put together than the film loses points. Erica Peeples is not a particularly likable pick in the lead, and her annoying, materialistic self-entitled character (who’s supposed to be super-smart—go figure) does no one any favour. You can literally point at any other actress in the film (even veteran Starletta DuPois!) and say, “I’d like her better as the lead.”  Columbus Short is slightly better as the drug lord (supposedly trying to go straight, which lasts maybe five minutes), but he’s ill-served by the demands of the script. Speaking of script, well: people get gunned down on a regular, almost predictable schedule, and the women sitting next to their targeted boyfriends don’t fare any better. I remain puzzled by the film’s message, because in between the usual “if you run with gangsters, you’ll get shot” theme, it seems curiously comfortable with the protagonist living off what she knows is blood money. I know, I know: fantasy wish-fulfillment, etc., but it’s still dumb. The direction is indifferent, the photography is flat, and there’s scarcely any reason to keep watching the film as it gets dumber and more amoral. (By the time the lead character is arguing with an executor about a house that belongs to someone else, we’re firmly in the “self-absorbed brat, please” camp.)  It’s just a clumsy film without much of an idea where it’s going, or how to get there. Learning that True to the Game is based on a self-published novel explains quite a lot, except why many people thought that this was just fine as a movie. (Even worse: it has spawned two sequels, which I’ll eventually see because I can’t help myself.)