Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. With little indie films especially, we depend on you guys to tip us off when you see something you like. Frequently, family and friends of people working on these films are the first eyes to peep at the pictures, but I’ve noticed that it’s rare for people to send in their reactions unless they’re genuinely excited by something they’ve seen. To that end, we’ve got this reaction from someone who is dating someone who has some connection to the film. Even so, this sounds like a film that she really connected with, so maybe it’s time to put ROCK THE PAINT on the rader. Check it out:
ROCK THE PAINT is an indie movie that really blew me away. It has the writing, directing, acting and a soundtrack of a major motion picture, and an intense, raw and powerful one at that. The movie opens on two brothers, seventeen year old Josh and eleven year old Tim, living on a farm in Indiana . Their world revolves around urban hiphop groups like Niggaz With Attitude and all-state midwest basketball. They live in a borrowed room with Lenny, their father, who is still recovering from the death of his wife. The little family is abruptly thrown into a new world when Lenny lands a teaching job in Newark , New Jersey . Black urban culture, no longer safely bottled up in the music pounding on Tim’s 80’s style boombox, hits them in the face from the moment they step onto their first Newark basketball street court. On the court, Josh quickly makes friends with Antwone (Kevin Phillips) but finds himself increasingly shut out by Antwone’s best friend T-Bone (Jas Anserson). Racial tensions build as T-Bone turns on Josh when the “white-boy” displaces him as a starter on their all-Black high school team, and Antwone falls out with Josh when he hears Tim blurt out the N-word. When T-Bone betrays them both in two shocking acts of violence, it’s only by the narrowest of margins that retribution is sought on the basketball court instead of on the streets of Newark with guns and blades. But even in the final moments of the big game, racial tensions explode on the court, and when the two teams clash, all hell breaks loose. The two young male stars are both comers on the Hollywood scene. Douglas Smith is featured weekly on HBO’s BIG LOVE, and Kevin Phillips stars opposite Terence Howard and Bernie Mac in the upcoming major release, PRIDE. Both young men give great performances as the two boys in conflict on the court and off. Playing Antwone’s younger sister, Keesha, the beauty Joanna Hartshorne, cranks up the teen hormones and every time she and Douglas are in the same frame the screen burns up with pubescent heat. The scenes are so tender and intimate, you almost want to look away and leave them alone—but you can’t. Two other actors deserve special mention. Jas Anderson delivers a unique and piercing performance, full of violence and pain, with his portrayal of the troubled T-Bone. And Sam Stone, the indie world’s male answer to Dakota Fanning with his on-screen presence and the size of his talent, commands the screen with a pint-sized powerhouse performance, ranging from the comic to the tragic. Not bad for an eleven year old kid! I see a lot of indie movies (my boyfriend crews on some of the bigger ones), and it’s rare that you see one where everything gels, but everything does in ROCK THE PAINT. The relationships between the characters are raw and intense, the situations are real and deeply felt, the romances are sensitive and vulnerable and the movie delivers all of this in a setting and story that feels more aware of the world it’s supposed to be in, than the usual Hollywood fantasy bubble. There’s not a lot of fantasy going on in this movie, but there is a courageous face-to-face with the intense, raw emotions that real people feel, boiling away in the youthful arenas of the street and the urban basketball court. Every character in the movie isn’t just well-observed, they seem as real as if you just met them in the ‘hood. ROCK THE PAINT happens in a world where, even though you’re going to a religious high school, you may have trouble locating God, and even if you can, “we don’t need God, we need points!” as Antwone says in one scene. And the spirit of these characters that will propel you through the film is their willingness to find faith and hope when there doesn’t seem to be any, and to recover it when all seems lost. Especially remarkable, for me, was an ending that, while it finds resolution for the story, points at the truth that, for these characters in this world, the only resolution is no resolution at all. Special Note: Wyclef Jean did the music for the film, and it’s really hot. It’s one more reason to go and see ROCK THE PAINT. It is "cool!" Call me PsychGirl if you use this.
