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De'aundre
Bonds, Richard T. Jones, and Gabriel Casseus play three friends
who go from the 'hood to the cell.
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'Lockdown' Needs
A Script to Get Out
of Jail Free
by Esther Iverem
SeeingBlack.com Editor and Film Critic
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For at least the immediate future, all prison dramas will draw
comparisons to "Oz," the popular television series that has created
a compelling prison burlesque of brutal violence and sleek melodrama.
Of course, Hollywood has raised "jumping on the bandwagon" to a
high art form and there are reportedly right now several new prison
dramas in the industry incubator.
Lockdown has the violence—and some more. It centers
the prison experience among the lives of Black men, who are disproportionately
represented in today's prisons—one of the nation's largest
"growth industries," or, as some call them, "the new plantations."
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Richard
T. Jones as "Avery."
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It states, simply, almost in passing, how easy it is for Black
men to become caught up in trouble and land in prison. Three friends
from Los Angeles who wind up locked down are innocent of the murder
of which they were convicted. And one of the men, Avery, (Richard
T. Jones) is a talented swimmer who has just lost the possible opportunity
to attend college on an athletic scholarship.
More focus more sympathy is given to Avery and his story. His friend,
Cashmere (Gabriel Casseus), is a drug dealer and was seemingly headed
to prison anyway (especially, as the plot has it, Cashmere is willing
to shoot a police officer in retaliation for the officer firing
on his dog.) The third prisoner, Dre (De'aundre Bonds), a quiet-natured
man making an honest living at a dry cleaners, is the most vulnerable
of the three. He shudders as the bus makes its way to the prison.
Obviously, the bus scene prepares us for Dre's lack of toughness
and how he is especially ill-suited for the life ahead-if anyone
ever is.
Though it is not adequately explained, childhood and lifelong friendship
is what binds the three men together. None of their characters are
finely drawn. Once inside the prison, each is defined by the one-dimensional
persona given them: Avery is tough, hotheaded and physically able
to defend himself. Cashmere is criminal to the bone and lives inside
the prison by the same street rules he knows. Dre is an innocent
and, in prison, becomes a sacrificial lamb.
Despite the deficiencies in the script by Preston A. Whitmore (Fled,
The Walking Dead), the performances by Jones, Casseus and
Bonds are first-rate. Also worthy of mention is Clifton Powell,
who plays Malachi, a seasoned and mellow con who offers Avery tips
for survival.
The violence is unsparing and exhausting. If only the filmmakers
had been as unsparing in their effort to fully draw these characters,
they would have a better movie on their hands. Lockdown wrings
you out with its raw power, which comes from its raw action, not
from its raw passion for the lives of three Black men.
Screened at Acapulco Black Film Festival
2001.
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-- June 21, 2001
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2001-05 Seeing Black, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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