Rather than simply film Kosmond Russell's award-winning play, first-time
feature director Jordan Walker-Pearlman made a few improvements.
Unfortunately, the result is so overloaded with extra characters, tangled
story lines, dance numbers, fantasies and flashbacks that the once-simple plot
feels puffed-up and irritatingly self-important. And that's too bad, because
the film includes fine performances and some very inventive camerawork from
cinematographer John Ndiaga Demp. But it lacks the very first thing a director
should provide: direction. Alex Waters (Hill Harper) has been sentenced to 25
years in California's Union Grove State Penitentiary for a rape he swears he
didn't commit. He's also HIV+, and unless he's granted parole at his upcoming
hearing, he faces the prospect of dying behind prison walls, within earshot of
the nearby passing trains that have come to symbolize freedom. Alex, however,
disregards the prison psychiatrist's (Phylicia Rashad) advice and remains
unrepentant, asocial and understandably angry, an attitude that won't go over
well with the parole board. What they can't see — Alex's inner development — becomes clear to us through a series of emotionally charged
visits, first from his successful older brother, Tony (Obba Babatunde), then
his parents (Marla Gibbs and Billy Dee Williams) then finally the one person
who might turn his life around, recovering crack addict and incest survivor
Felicia MacDonald (Rae Dawn Chong), whom Alex once loved. In addition to all
the extraneous narrative devices — none of which add much to the plot
— it's clear that Walker-Pearlman encouraged his cast to improvise around
Russell's dialogue and all too often resorts to abrupt fade-outs to get his
desperate actors out of dead-end scenes. There are flashes of inspiration, and
it's unfair to dismiss Walker-Pearlman out of hand. He's clearly a talent in
the raw, but that talent remains buried under a mountain of over-ambition and
poor judgement. --Ken Fox
