Gridlock'd

Bomb Rating: 

Looking for the good story or compelling characters that mark a worthwhile film about society's darker reaches? Gridlock'd seems to take a certain joy in having neither.

The most significant thing I learned from this film is that TupacShakur had a lumpy head. It seemed odd to me that someone would want to shave all his hair off to reveal a skull with such freakish indentations.

Other than that, "Gridlock'd" is one long practice in redundancy -- drug addicts demonstrating how much life sucks. Furthermore, it doesn't help that director Vondie Curtis-Hall uses a circular plot technique, making the final shot of Stretch (Tim Roth) and Spoon (Tupac Shakur) in the same hospital where the film began a nice punch-in-the-stomach reminder that, indeed, these characters -- and the audience -- have gone nowhere.

Looking for the good story or compelling characters that mark a worthwhile film about society's darker reaches? Gridlock'd seems to take a certain joy in having neither. Stretch and Spoon flit from one office to another hoping to get into a rehab program, then complain when bureaucratic red tape blocks their easy admission. Frustrated, they go shoot up some more.

Only at the end of the film did I realize that, all along, it was meant to be a comedy: In a sequence meant to be humorous, Spoon has Stretch stab him in the stomach with a pocket knife so the hospital will admit them and they'll have a place to spend the night. This really does wonders for my sense of social responsibility. The next time you're being stabbed in the stomach by your "friend" and you're wondering who that is laughing hysterically as you bleed to death, you'll know it's probably Mr. Cranky and the few other people permanently twisted by having watched "Gridlock'd."