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| Mars Distribution | Release Date: October 7, 1998 |
Starring:
Allan E. Lucas, Andre Taylor, Beau Sia, Bonz Malone, Lawrence Wilson, Momolu Stewart, Reamer Shedrick, Ron Jones, Saul Williams, Sonja Sohn
Summary:
Grand Jury Prize, 1998 Sundance Film Festival. A talented youth (Saul Williams) copes with urban crime and despair by competing in poetry slams. Sonja Sohn of "The Wire" costars.
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Not only does Slam strike me as one of the best films about being a writer I've ever seen, it is also the least sentimental coming-of-age movie to come along in years. [06 Nov 1998, p.19]
With the charismatic Williams and Sohn leading the way, "Slam" electrifyingly moves beyond wishful thinking to hot immediacy, and, yes, earned optimism. [23 Oct 1998, p.D4]
Directed and cowritten by Marc Levin with an intentionally untidy, restless, handheld style that owes a lot to his background as a documentary filmmaker, Slam effectively gets at the deadly, no-way-out despair that can squeeze a man as he realizes he’s become a numbered nobody in the huge, imperfect justice system. Levin’s best idea, though, is to counterbalance that hopelessness with freeing blasts of verse, performed with such drama and passion that audiences may want to break into applause.
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Levin brings to "Slam" a raw, impressionistic style that expresses its highly charged emotions effectively and goes a long way to offset that there's not much in the way of traditional-style character development. [21 Oct 1998, p.F5]
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