01/29/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Gridlock'd
Weak script puts actors in a jam in 'Gridlock'd'

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

** (out of five)
Starring Tim Roth, Tupac Shakur, Thandie Newton, Vondie Curtis Hall, Charles Fleischer, Howard Hesseman. A Gramercy Pictures release written and directed by Hall. Rated R, contains violence, drug use, nudity, profanity, ethnic slurs. Running time: 93 minutes.

Gridlock'd is one of two unreleased films rap singer Tupac Shakur made shortly before he was gunned down last September in Las Vegas at age 25.

It's billed as a gritty urban comedy, but don't expect many laughs. Despite some twists that probably looked amusing on the printed page, watching Gridlock'd is misery.

Shakur and Tim Roth play a pair of drug addicts who decide to go straight after a friend, a jazz singer in their band named Cookie (Thandie Newton), overdoses and winds up near death in the hospital.

Most of the rest of the film revolves around their battles with the bureaucracy as they attempt to get enrolled in a detox center.

It isn't easy.

There's a waiting list. One must be HIV-positive to jump ahead of the line. The old detox center is now devoted solely to helping alcoholics. The city office dealing with drug cases has moved. By the time they arrive there, it's closing. A blind man and his dog go temporarily insane in a welfare office and cause a riot.

Meanwhile, they're being chased by the police after becoming suspects in a murder case. And the real killer is after them, too, for having ripped him off in a scam.

In the middle of all this, Shakur's Spoon and Roth's Stretch must keep feeding their habits (although Spoon is never seen doing this) to maintain their balance.

Despite its title, there sure is lots of movement in Gridlock'd.

Unfortunately, there isn't lots of wit or humor to it (and don't think that's impossible given the subject matter, because the British film Trainspotting, about young drug addicts, was often outrageously funny).

Gridlock'd is loaded with irony, though, not the least of which comes in a closing scene that puts a capper on everything and looks like it would have made a nifty closing moment to a college short story.

Writer-director Vondie Curtis Hall has created action, but his heroes are whiny lowlifes who have nothing to say, and Gridlock'd becomes a dreary exercise. I wasn't convinced that these two hapless rovers were really eager to go straight, nor that the wild and crazy Stretch could be a buddy for the more sensible Spoon.

Yet Roth, a Brit, is especially strong (and with a convincing Midwest accent . . . the film was shot in the most woeful areas of Detroit) as the increasingly desperate Stretch, for whom life seems to be one wrong turn after another.

And Shakur creates some empathy as Spoon, who can never seem to get himself or his friend out of their messes no matter how much he tries.