Credit: www.impawards.com
Director:
Damon Dash
Cast:
Damon Dash……….Dame
Robert Feeley……….Inmate
Derege Harding……….Thug
John Heinlein……….Correction officer
Jagger Kaye……….Court Officer
Adam Moreno……….Warden
PatrÃÂÂcia Mota……….Girlfriend
Noreaga……….Loco (as Victor Santeago)
Omahyra……….Herself
Roselyn Sanchez……….Lawyer
Beanie Sigel……….Beans
Derrick Simmons……….Cop
Omillio Sparks……….Baby Boy
There’s always been a certain sort of volatility between the worlds of music and cinema. Musicians try to act and stars of the screen want to top the Billboard charts. This has been especially true as of late due to the influx of rappers into acting. Ice Cube, Ice-T, and Ja Rule, amongst others, have all found starring and supporting roles in many movies. But the main thing is that starring roles for rappers tend to come more in direct to video releases than movies intended for a release in the theatres first. Quality roles, though, are few and far between for most rappers. Outside of Eminem’s starring turn in 8 Mile and DMX’s headlining Never Die Alone, most rappers are cast opposite fading action stars like Steven Segal or as secondary characters in lower-echelon action movies (Ja Rule in the remake of Assault on Precinct 13, for example). So when a movie is released that features more hip-hop stars than movie stars people will notice. And if it’s successful enough on video for a sequel in the theatres, then perhaps more people will take it seriously.
2002’s State Property introduced a criminal named Beans (Beanie Sigel), a man down on his luck who decided to go out and take the American dream by gunpoint. Forming a crime syndicate called ABM, Beans clashed with the resident gangsters of Philadelphia in his quest to become the kingpin of the city of brotherly love. Featuring many hip-hop stars (Jay-Z, D-Nice and DJ Clue amongst others), State Property was a gangster movie in the vein of oft-emulated movies like Scarface.
The movie follows three central characters. It picks up where it left off in the original movie as Beans is imprisoned and on trial. He still wants to be a kingpin with his syndicate despite his incarceration. His rival is Dame (Damon Dash, who also wrote and directed the movie), a Harlem-born hustler. He runs the Umbrella network and is currently the number one criminal in town. His cash flow and drug supply is beyond par; he also is interested in being number one and wages war with Beans and his crew. Rapper Noreaga finishes off our cast of hip-hoppers as Loco, the flashy Miami playboy. He is about to be released from prison and wants in on the top of the rung himself. Loco also has issues with his past he must contend with that haunt him and his quest for life.
Toss in a mysterious party wanting all three out of the picture and a climactic final shoot-out in the streets of Philadelphia and you have the backbone of State Property 2. On paper, it’s a great concept that is executed sharply in brief moments.
The camera angles and graphics are borrowed heavily from other thriller movies, but Dash did steal his camera angles from other, better movies and it shows. He has a dark styling to the movie that makes it look somewhat interesting from a pure aesthetic standpoint. But for all of the good of the way the movie is shot, the problems are multiple.
The major problem is in the casting itself. As actors, the cast makes better musical artists. The cast is really trying; this isn’t a case of a group of talented people just mailing it in like Ocean’s 12; this is a group of under-talented people who are really trying but not pulling it off. None of the three principles (Noreaga, Sigel and Dash) are really suited for their roles. A lot of it has to do with how their dialogue is written.
The good majority of the dialogue of the movie is not done in a manner suited to the delivery styles of the actors. Sigel has a much more subdued delivery and speaking style than Beans is required to have. For someone who is supposed to be a man who is more force of will, he comes off as soft-spoken and weak. And that is a recurring theme; Dash, being the writer, producer and director (not to mention one of the stars), has to try and use a monstrous vocabulary of polysyllabic words in every line he uses, and yet it doesn’t’ feel natural. He forces it, and it feels like he’s reading his lines rather than delivering them.
To further compound this is the lack of a real flow to the story. As soon as it starts to get going we are slowed down with something, generally due to the lack of creativity involved with introducing the characters in the movie. Whenever someone is introduced they are given a fairly lengthy background sequence. It slows the pace of the movie down, as a whole 1/3 of the movie is taken up with introductions. The narrative also compounds the story flow, as it shifts from character to character based on their perspective of the whole gangland warfare. The problem with this is that by breaking up the story into so many different narratives (five in all), the story never develops concretely.
The characters, by proxy, also don’t develop as fully do to the constant shifting. We are given small snippets and shades of characters; you can’t get involved into the story because of the continually poor development continuing from the first movie. This is a poorly developed story, but the coup de grace is the poor execution of the action sequences.
Laughable at best, the big shootout at the end comes off as flat and uninspired. The violence is gratuitous at best and comedic at worst, taking away from the gravity Dash intends it to have. The violence is supposed to be intense and comes off as forced. It makes for a disappointing at best urban thriller.
