Juice Reviews

JUICE marks the directorial debut of Ernest Dickerson, best known as Spike Lee's cinematographer of choice. Dickerson also co-wrote this energetic, but uneven, story about four young men coming of age on the streets of Harlem. In a kind of dark variation on the excellent HANGIN' WITH THE HOMEBOYS, JUICE takes us into the lives of four friends, one of whom aspires to something more than the daily round of "ditching" school and sparring with rival gangs. "Q" (Omar Epps) dreams of being a DJ, but his plans to make it big, via a local talent contest, are threatened by his friend Bishop (Tupac Shakur). Bishop's ambitions are somewhat less artistic; the bitterest and most aggressive of the four, he pressures the group into staging an armed robbery on the night of the contest, with Q's performance as an alibi. (If you're looking for clues as to how things turn out, the contest is billed as a "Mixmaster Massacre.") Up until the robbery, JUICE is an entertaining and convincing piece of work. The lives of Q, Bishop and their friends are sketched with economy and humor, and the contradictions of their world--where a happy-go-lucky schoolboy is also an absentee father--are conveyed with a quietly effective matter-of-factness. But during the course of that fateful night, the film takes a downward plunge from realism into violent melodrama. Bishop undergoes an unexplained transformation from frustrated teenager to trigger-happy psycho, and the movie plays itself out in a series of sensationalist confrontations and shootings.