Juice (1992)

Directed by Ernest R. Dickerson. Starring Omar Epps, Tupac Shakur, Khalil Kain, Jermaine Hopkins, Cindy Herron, Samuel L. Jackson, Vincent Laresca, Grace Garland, Queen Latifah. [R]

What begins as a zigzagging tour of the lives of four black teens in Harlem eventually calcifies into a brutal morality play of paranoia, betrayal, and brinkmanship. Epps, Shakur, Kain and Hopkins play the youths who casually swim through the waters of juvenile delinquency (skipping school, stealing records, etc.), but when one of them gets their hands on a gun, the opportunity to get the “juice” sends them on the violent path to tragedy and ruin. At its best during the early slice-of-life vignettes; the sour turn toward escalating violence in the second half plays out like a by-the-numbers melodrama. The way that one of the friends transforms into such a desperate, cold-blooded killer doesn’t seem credible in light of the earlier scenes, and the script mechanism that turns “the gun” into a corrupting symbol borders on parody at times (as if expecting an emaciated crackhead to emerge from an alleyway at any minute, grasping for the revolver like an inner-city Gollum). Dickerson, whose camera invigorated several Spike Lee joints before this, makes a solid directorial debut here—for all the dramatic missteps the movie makes, it’s still almost always exciting to look at. Shakur is impressive in his first starring role; several other figures in the rap community make brief appearances.

66/100