Waist Deep

A sugar buzz

By TOM MEEK | June 28, 2006

2.0 Stars

Larenz Tate in Waist Deep

In this hip-hop urban Bonnie and Clyde wanna-be, charismatic rapper/actor Tyrese (Baby Boy, 2 Fast 2 Furious) plays O2, a recent parolee whose efforts to go straight are derailed when a Crenshaw drug lord inadvertently kidnaps his son during a carjacking. The plot, which has O2 robbing banks and playing one gang against another (a well-worn convention lifted from Yojimbo or any Sergio Leone Western), unfurls in a series of rap-propelled vignettes with Tyrese bristling and narrow-eyed. In fact, everything director Vondie Curtis-Hall drops around his star feels like a photo-shoot prop — even the abducted boy, who when not on screen is forgotten. Curtis-Hall, the former ER actor who showed promise with Gridlock’d but bombed with Glitter, keeps the energy level high, even if it is a sugar buzz, and the supporting cast — which includes the Game, convincing as the heavy — breathes life into two-dimensional roles.

Related: Pirates' ransom, Annapolis, Building better bodyguards, More

Pirates' ransom
Well, enough of the funny stuff with the Oregon Ducks’ recent crime wave. This week, we’re back into the world of straight-out, nasty, pointless, idiotic violence, committed by young athletes with everything to lose and only a few bucks to gain.
Annapolis
In this ersatz yet entertaining knockoff of An Officer and a Gentleman , hot hunk James Franco ( Spider-Man and the disastrous Tristan & Isolde ) plays Jake Huard, a working-class hothead who through perseverance goes from welding ships on one side of the bay to being a plebe at the title Naval Academy on the other.
Building better bodyguards
This article originally ran in the May 2, 1978 issue of the Boston Phoenix .
Free at last
Bernard Baran was released from prison on June 30, and is now free on bail awaiting a new trial. The Baran interview: an extended transcript of Michael Bronski and Catherine Tumber's conversation with Bernard Baran.
Our Disappeared
Between 1976 and 1983, some 30,000 people were kidnapped and killed by the Argentine military dictatorship.
Gay meant guilty
On April 8, 1981, Wayne Healy, a 29-year-old gay man, was convicted of brutally murdering his former brother-in-law during a sexual encounter.
Boston agrees to pay $3.2 million to Stephan Cowans
Finally giving Stephan Cowans some measure of justice for the six and a half years he spent in prison for a crime he did not commit, the City of Boston has agreed to pay $3.2 million to settle a civil lawsuit, the Phoenix has learned.
What's the scam?
Back on the morning of June 7, 1982, a man walked into the New York branch of the Middle East Bank on the 25th floor of a Madison Avenue office building and tried to deposit a $2 million check. The man, a native of the United Arab Emirates, left without completing the transaction.
Blowin' in the wind
There's going to be a lot of snickering and chortling this week after former-top-NFL-prospect-turned-galactic-draft-bust Ryan Leaf got arrested on drug and burglary charges.
Brass balls and cold steel
John “Red” Shea’s close-cut hair — the hair that gave him that standard-issue Irish nickname — isn’t quite as fiery as it was when he was a young fighter coming up hard from G Street in South Boston.
A Supermax “graduate”
The Supermax makes mentally unstable prisoners worse, its critics say.
Less

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