MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Straight Out of Brooklyn’ a Promising First Effort

“Straight Out of Brooklyn” (selected theaters) was written and directed by first-time filmmaker Matty Rich at the preposterous age of 19. I’m tempted to say that the most impressive thing about the movie is that it was made at all, but that wouldn’t be quite fair. As ragged and amateurish as the film is, it’s still trying for something substantial--a portrait, observed honestly, from the inside, of a black family in a crime-ridden housing project in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Dennis Brown (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) listens at night to the sounds of his enraged, alcoholic father (George T. Odom) brutalizing his mother (Anne D. Sanders) and dreams of his escape. But he also casts himself as the family’s savior. Together with his friends Kevin (Mark Malone) and Larry (Rich) he plots to rob a neighborhood drug dealer and use the money to pull his family together. He fantasizes Manhattan as the land of opportunity, and thinks if he moves his family there all will be well.

It’s a touchingly naive dream, perhaps too naive, but it’s easy to respond to Dennis’ last-ditch impracticality. His girlfriend, Shirley (Reana E. Drummond), is far more level-headed, but even she recognizes what a leap he must make if he is ever to save himself.

The rage of Dennis’ father is at the whole white world for what he has become. A gas station attendant, we see him throttle his fury at a snooty white customer and then, later, take it out on his wife. Ray Brown is a man who is long past having any ambition or hope; he commandeers his children in a parody of paternal authority, but it’s a sham that Dennis and his sister (Barbara Sanon) barely acknowledge. Their mother, Frankie, clings to her own sham--that Ray will stop beating her, that the family will survive--and in so doing allows herself to be battered.

Dennis may hate his father, but he is able to take a longer view of Ray’s predicament. There are a few moments, like when Ray mentions to his son that he wanted to become a doctor, when you can see how the boy is tempering his own rage toward his father. This sort of thing helps to explain why, when Ray gets the drug money, he wants to include his father in on the move to Manhattan. Dennis still clings to the fantasy that his family can be made whole--it’s his final patch of innocence. In a way, he is as far gone as his father; he doesn’t realize that Ray is already past salvation.

The fact that so much of this material comes through in spite of Rich’s awkwardness as a filmmaker is a tribute to his principled concern. Drawn in part from his own childhood--Rich still lives in the Red Hook housing projects--the movie has the kind of tentative, searching quality that you often see in raw, autobiographical works by young artists. However, because of the expense and technical difficulties involved in making a movie, it’s not often that filmmakers get a chance to make a feature film while they’re still young enough to be exploring their adolescent conflicts. “Straight Out of Brooklyn” is a coming-of-age movie by someone who is still very much coming-of-age.

Rich, who studied briefly at NYU Film School, financed this extremely low-budget movie mostly on drive and jawbone. He might have done himself a favor if he’d stayed in school a little longer; young as he is, he has absorbed some of the more dubious and formulaic tactics of TV “problem” drama, and they don’t allow him to release his own unformed anger. There’s no evidence in “Straight Out of Brooklyn” (rated R for strong language) that Rich is a particularly gifted filmmaker, but he is so young that, if he stays the course and continues to value human drama over technique, his technique might one day catch up with his ambition.

He has an appreciation of actors that allows for some marvelous moments, such as the brief interlude when Ray, alone in his apartment, puts on an old blues record and slowly sashays to the beat. And Rich himself is a funny live-wire performer; his scat performing style has the pulse that his filmmaking lacks.

It makes perfect sense now that a young black filmmaker such as Rich would break through the impossibilities of the film business to make his movie. For him, and others like him who are just coming up, or have already arrived (like Bill Duke and Charles Burnett), making movies becomes a way of lifting yourself out of society’s hatreds, of putting yourself out there and stirring up audiences. And, perhaps, unifying them, too.

So far the explosion in black-oriented films is more of a sociological than an aesthetic phenomenon, but it’s still the most exciting game in town. These filmmakers are putting things on the screen that have never been in movies before, but desperately need to be if we are to have any real sense of what this country is all about. The masterpieces will come.

‘Straight Out of Brooklyn’

George T. Odom:: Ray Brown

Ann D. Sanders: Frankie Brown

Lawrence Gilliard Jr.: Dennis Brown

Reana E. Drummond: Shirley

A Samuel Goldwyn Co. release. Writer-producer-director Matty Rich. Executive producers Lindsay Law and Ira Deutchman. Cinematographer John Rosnell. Editor Jack Haigis. Music Harold Wheeler. Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (violence, strong language).