True to the Game series

  • True to the Game 3 (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2022) If you had told me, right after watching the first True to the Game film, that I would be looking forward to a third instalment’s BET channel TV premiere, I would have called you craaazy. Just re-read my review to understand why. Heck, I had trouble bringing myself to watching the sequel. But True to the Game 2 was a significant step up—abandoning the more irritating elements of the first film and focusing on a more engaging storyline of a woman being stalked for past transgressions. I was looking forward to this third instalment… and was disappointed to find out that it went back to the first film in more ways than one. Resurrecting a character whose death was the point of the first film was the first problem—having the action move back to Philadelphia is a second issue and re-glorifying crime is the final straw. Taking a wholesale liquidation approach to its plotting, this concluding instalment gets back to the first film’s weird ambivalence toward illicit activities—sure, there’s violence and death of about half of the main cast, but it’s all papered over by characters who don’t really think as if they’re criminals, and point at far worse criminals as justification for their acts. (It’s also all about money as motivation, which doesn’t exactly ennoble anyone either.)  The series heroine once again feels overshadowed by the male lead (another problem that the second instalment had resolved), and the cinematography is far less distinctive as well. Executed with a low budget, True to the Game 3’s execution is nothing special: Director David Wolfgang doesn’t do much with what he has. Erica Peeples is bland, and few actors distinguish themselves—the obvious exception being veteran Starletta DuPois as “Gah-Git.”  What a disappointment—failing to capitalize on the gains made during the second instalment of the series, True to the Game 3 remains better than the first film, but that’s not saying much.

  • True to the Game 2 (2020)

    True to the Game 2 (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2021) Considering my low opinion of the first True to the Game, I really wasn’t expecting much from the follow-up. To my surprise, it’s actually better than the original—not by much, and not enough to rate as a good film, but at least it’s not filled with annoyances as the first was. While the first was an unwieldy adaptation of a self-published novel, this one seems to be a purely cinematic expansion, picking up a short time after the events of the first film. Our protagonist (Erica Peeples, not bad) has become a NYC journalist, grown a more flattering hairstyle, and polished many of the most irritating edges of her personality. When she gets an offer to profile a rich businessman in Los Angeles, she drives there (what?!?), is romanced by two men (one of them white, the other black—and surprisingly enough for a BET-broadcast production, it’s the white guy who’s the good one) and gets a largely useless revelation from her interviewee. Meanwhile, shenanigans back in Philadelphia put the rest of her family once again in danger in what is largely a separate subplot. Finally, there’s a dangerous man who sets out to take revenge (or at least money) from the protagonist by seducing her before his inevitable betrayal. Those are big broad strokes of plot and they’re not even gracefully integrated together. Characters make decisions that only work because they lead to the next plot point (and sometimes not even that, such as the inexplicable decision to drive from NYC to L.A. rather than take a plane), there are nick-of-time coincidences and the film ends before resolving its own plot, obviously announcing the eventual arrival of True to the Game 3. Still, I did not dislike the brute-force entertainment of the results (macho gangsterism, cheap thrills, naked girls and all) and certainly liked it better than the clumsy original.