Simply A Masterpiece

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Fade in. Show picture of hommies. Enter voice-over. Beans (Beanie Sigel) tells us what a dog eat dog world this is. All about the Benjamins y'all. Enter titles sequence - lots of pole dancing, close shots of silicon enhanced nipples and focus on ho's wiggling that thang! Camera focus on Beanie and Baby Boy getting down with the girlies. Enter brain light-bulb. Beanie thinks: Yo, had enough of being a poor mother... Time to get rich or die trying. Six weeks later: Beans, Baby Boy and a couple of thugs start randomly shooting drug dealers in broad daylight to take over their business. No police or thugs to hand out pay-back. A year later: Beans rules all, moves out to the suburb, but still shoots, kills or whatever. A dozen or so incoherent sequences of hood crime idiocy later the movie ends. Yo! That was so not cool! Bad acting, terrible phony script (or more like random parts of scripts clinging together with the use of duct tape) and a tiresome 90 minutes of low-budget pointlessness. Not much more to add but honestly avoid at all costs. It may be low-budget, but that does not take the director off the hook of making something as tacky and superficial as this. Why the hell did anyone make a second part?

I was hoping that i might enjoy this after reading some of the positive reviews about it. Also, I have liked Jay-Z in some other acting roles, and I like some of his music. Unfortunately, this movie totally sucks. Beans looked like he was going to be a pretty interesting character at first. But then the movie descended into pointless violence and every other worth was either the 'n' word or a curse word. The plot was non existent, the story just rambles about from one violent scene to another. And Jay-Z's character, who I was really looking forward too, was just plain silly and completely unbelievable. This movie was a complete, utter, total waste of time. I should have just taken a nap, I am sure I would have been much more entertained by a dream.

I was surprised by this film. Saw it late night on BET. Was very impressed with its intensity. Having lived in NYC during the early days of crack and having had friends that grew up in the projects, the film struck a chord.The guy that plays 'Beanie' is intense in this film. Great performance in my opinion and I loved the tag line "Ya either get down or ya lay down and if ya lay down, y'r gonna stay down."I was also impressed with some of the special effects. Pretty gritty in spots.Although this is not a perfect film by any means, I do believe that it is worth viewing.I have not seen the sequel.

Yes the acting was garbage, I will admit that, and the story was NOT original at all, but I still really enjoyed the movie. Granted I am a big fan of Roc-A-Fella records and all of their artists. If you are a fan of rap, or low budget movies you will like it...Personally I thought Dame's character was the most enjoyable of them all, especially the scene with him and Jigga man talking in the front of his Benz. Not as good of a rap movie as Belly but still a pretty good hood flick. The acting, filming, dialog and story are NOTHING SPECIAL or ORIGINAL, but it does have enough action and jokes to keep it entertaining if you ENJOY films of this genre. If you don't like low-budget/rap/hood/gangsta movies then stay away!