Action film has Tarantino edge
The New Orleans-set ‘Cut Throat City’ examines young lives altered by Katrina.
Set in New Orleans, “Cut Throat City” shows how systemic racism can be as deadly as weapons.
The colorful animated opening credits to the crime drama “Cut Throat City” promise a picture both cartoonishly broad and gratuitously violent. But the movie undercuts those expectations almost immediately with the next scene, which reveals that these images were just panels in a graphic novel, drawn by a young artist named Blink (Shameik Moore), whose own friends complain to him that his lurid comic book fantasies are phony and too derivative of Quentin Tarantino. “Cut Throat City” was written by P.G. Cuschieri and directed by RZA, the latter of whom worked with Tarantino on the soundtrack to the “Kill Bill” movies. The Tarantino reference is less of a slam than a statement. It’s defining what this film’s going to be: a collection of fascinating characters and digressive conversations, framed a bit more realistically than in “Pulp Fiction.”
Set in New Orleans shortly after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, “Cut Throat City” starts slow, meandering by design. Cuschieri and RZA take the time to introduce Blink and his friends as a new kind of “lost generation,” whose past attempts to build something in their lives have all been washed away by the storm — and by a political and economic system that doesn’t prioritize their neighborhood.
So the guys dabble in robbery, following the lead of their block’s main mobster, Cousin (played by the rapper T.I.). Becoming scofflaws gets them noticed: by a savvy police detective (Eiza González), a cynical good ol’ boy politician (Ethan Hawke), and a flamboyant drug lord (Terrence Howard).
The big-name supporting performances — which also include Wesley Snipes as Blink’s earnest father and Rob Morgan as a dirty cop — give “Cut Throat City” some jolts of energy and theatrical flair. The downside to Cuschieri and RZA aiming for realism over sensationalism is that their movie sometimes feels aimless. And it doesn’t help that of the central cast, only the young-but-accomplished Moore has much screen presence.
Still, given RZA’s bona fides as a genre movie aficionado (and filmmaker, with his martial arts mini-epic “The Man with the Iron Fists”), it would’ve been easy for him to turn Cuschieri’s script into the kind of bulletriddled B-picture the opening credits tease. Instead, the action sequences are almost an afterthought. “Cut Throat City” is a more thoughtful and personal film, concerned with how systemic racism — and zoning ordinances — can kill more people than a gun.