"BlacKout:" A DVD Review

Let me let you in on a little secret. I started writing reviews for movies and DVDs and other things on Associated Content just over a year or so ago. When I first started writing here, I wrote about all kinds of things. At some point, someone noticed that I was writing a lot of movie and DVD and television reviews. So, I was approached by someone at AC who asked me if I would like to write more of those reviews and get free advanced copies of DVDs that were soon to be released. I said yes, because I love movies. It's a heckuva a lot of fun, let me tell you.

However, a strange thing happens when you agree to do this. You start to get DVDs sent to you via the mail or DHL and sometimes, you have no idea where these movies come from, or what they were made for, or who made them and why and they often don't come with all of the material they will have if you buy them in the store that explains them. This was the case with the movie produced by BET Entertainment called "Blackout" which I received last week.

It is a movie that is a fictionalization of real events that took place in an area of Brooklyn known as Flatbush during the 2003 East Coast blackout. Apparently, while the rest of the world and most media were reporting how New York came together during the blackout this one particular neighborhood experieneced looting, fires, robbing, killings and gang-type activity.

Now comes the question I had as soon as the movie started: Would I rather watch a fictionalized account of this or would I rather watch a documentary about the same topic and about the same people? After watching the movie, I still can't say what my answer would be to that question.

I also cannot, for the life of me, figure out why this movie was made. Was this made for cable? There is a tremendous amount of swearing and cursing going on for it to be a movie for regular television, but it is a movie that feels very much like a Made-for-TV movie. It certainly isn't a movie of such quality that it should have ever been released into theaters. Was this a DVD meant for direct-to-DVD? Again, I have no idea.

The acting is very good, I guess. Melvin Van Peebles plays a super in one of the apartment buildings who has hidden the fact that he has a rich and amazing past. Jeffrey Wright plays a man who runs and owns a barber shop that is a community hangout and who tries desperately to hold the whole area together by sheer force of will. Wright is an amazing actor and he is amazing in this movie as well, but it's the material itself that I think lets him down. The script never rises above that feeling of Made-for-TV.

Zoe Saldana is in the cast as a woman with a boyfriend who hasn't been the same since 9/11 and then the subsequent loss of his job. Also thrown into this mix is a young gangster just released from prison with a very mean look in his eye and a young man with flashy clothes who is about to head off to college and gets in the crosshairs of those eyes. You just know, from the moment you see the two actors on screen, that these two are going to confront one another.

I think that may be very much a major flaw of this movie. The entire movie feels predictable. You can guess that the landlord is going to end up spending the night in Melvin Van Peebles' character's apartment and then learn things about each other. You know that the couple with the troubles is going to use the darkness and lack of power to find each other again and realize why they love each other.

Again, I couldn't help but feel that a documentary about that area of Brooklyn and that disaster and talking with real people who really lived in that area would have been more interesting. Within the DVD there is a very short documentary that almost touches on this, but then only talks to people who are involved with the movie itself and how they spent that night when the power went out. It was a good start, but it doesn't quite go far enough.

The movie ends with an uneblievably, sudden, abrupt and silly sermon by a character of a homeless man. He launches into this long, annoying monologue about the life and times of African Americans and the way too many of them kill each other for no good reason. It is vastly out of place and feels tacked on, as if the director feels the messages he wanted to get through to people by just telling the story were not strong enough, so he needs to draw this giant and needless excalamation point on the end of the story.

So, I would love to tell you where you can get this movie or where you should watch it, but I have no idea if "Blackout" will be showing up on television somewhere soon and you should check your local listings. I have no clue if it will be coming to a store that sells DVDs near you sometime soon. In the end, whether your investment is time or money, I don't think "Blackout" is worth it.

I do hope someone makes that documentary, though. That, I will watch.