In this template, a young [musician] named [Jay] living on the hard streets of the [Bronx] tries to balance his love for [music] and the cold hard realities of life in the 'hood. When he falls in love with a beautiful woman named [Alessandra], will he choose his relationship, or be drawn further into a life of [crime]?
Meanwhile, there's trouble at home from his overbearing [father], and a [brother] who has recently returned from [Iraq]. And if that wasn't enough, [Jay]'s friends are sucking him down even further, which leads to the climactic death of [FUNNY CHARACTER WHOSE LIFE HAS TURNED TRAGIC].
Okay, artifice aside... Beyond the screenplay, Agustin's direction, coupled with Mark Schwartzbard's cinematography is unnecessarily, and accidentally claustrophobic, to the point where I suspect they shot it in HD, and then trimmed the frames to 2:35. Occasionally, people's heads are cut off, or the focus is on a character's torso, rather than, say, their face.
Additionally, if you're going to set your movie in New York City, and have it be about the mean streets of the Bronx... Wouldn't you, you know, try to stay consistent with your geography? There's a sequence where Jay (Andrew Cisneros) walks down a street in the Bronx, and right into Alessandra's (Jenna Dewan) apartment in Brooklyn. Then, in alternate shots, it looks like he might me hanging out in Jersey, Queens, or Manhattan. I understand indie features have to take what they can get in terms of shooting permits, but please, don't show us landmarks and street signs.
The one saving grace are the performances. Though Cisneros may be a pretty awful original song writer (and if you're going to build a movie around the idea that your main character is an amazing musician... Maybe they should be an amazing musician? Just spit-balling here), but he has a very good singing voice, and despite the script, is pretty magnetic in the lead role. Dewan, slumming it after Step Up and Tamara, looks like she may have just provided her own wardrobe, hair, and makeup, but does what she can with a limited role of Girlfriend Character #2846. The rest of the performances are likable and natural, but similarly come straight out of Final Draft.
I'm all for telling generic stories about young artists rising above their lot in life, but for goodness sake, at least shoot it right.
So tired...
