Gridlock’d (1997)

Directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall. Starring Tim Roth, Tupac Shakur, Thandiwe Newton, Bokeem Woodbine, Elizabeth Peña, Howard Hesseman, Lucy Liu, John Sayles, Eric Payne, Tom Towles, Vondie Curtis-Hall. [R]

After their friend (Newton) overdoses, a pair of knockabout heroin addicts (Roth, Shakur) try to go straight by entering rehab, but roadblocks pop up around every city corner. Fresh spin on the strung-out sub-genre is something of a spiritual, cross-Atlantic “cousin” to Trainspotting, dealing with its harrowing social/health crisis on serious terms, but allowing the personalities and irony-spiced plot complications to flip it onto a darkly comic axis. Roth and Shakur are credibly cozy in their rapport, and their frustration is palpable as one thing after another keeps setting them back, with local government bureaucracy being the most excruciating (the average moviegoer doesn’t know what it’s like to have the cops after them, but they’ve surely been given the administrative run-around a few times…). Only their run-ins with a couple of hostile drug dealers doesn’t ring true. Directorial debut for actor Curtis-Hall; he also wrote the script and plays one of those aforementioned dealers.

75/100