Sucker Free City

If you catch the DVD of Sucker Free City, it comes subtitled in English already, so if your first language is English, don't turn on the subtitles. If you catch the movie Sucker Free City on Showtime TV, you probably should turn on the subs.Of the maybe five or six movies directed by Spike Lee I've watched, this is miles-away my fave; although, I have to admit this favoritism is partly due to the movie's main location being Hunters Point in 1974, and I've lived in and around the San Francisco Bay Area since 1963. And, it's partly due to the fact I could understand almost 100% of the movie's dialog. But, mainly it's due to the fact that this is a very very good movie.I remember reading L.B.T.E.S. (Long Before the End Started - on 9/11) that countries with just two cultures (supposedly like the U.S., having white and African-American cultures) and countries with many cultures (supposedly like the U.S.S.R.) were intrinsically less stable than countries with an "in-between" numbers of cultures (supposedly like many if not most modern European nations). And I remember thinking how American whites have in fact completely destroyed the African component of black Americans' culture over the last 450 years, so America hasn't had the postulated two cultures over that period of time; and, however true the thesis about instability and multiple cultures may be, you can't use America as an example of an unstable two-culture country. America, basically, has always been a one-culture country.Then after realizing that, I got to thinking about how the least assimilated post-Reagan African-Americans ("street" black people) had developed a language that was basically unintelligible to American whites, just as unintelligible as Spanish or any other non-English language, and I decided this development followed not unnaturally from the fact African culture has been effectively destroyed in America.But this understanding made me no more receptive to the new language that post-Reagan, street African-Americans used, and the Spike Lee movies I saw prior to Sucker Free City all required more familiarity with the street African-American language than I'd had time to acquire. However, Sucker Free City is approximately one-third "white" and the DVD's subtitles are excellent, so at last I've been able to experience a Spike Lee movie almost completely like it should be experienced - with full comprehension.To repeat: this is a very good movie.To quote from Wikipedia's synopsis of Sucker Free City: "The film follows three young men as they are drawn into lives of crime. Nick {a white, Ben Crowley} uses his entry-level corporate job to commit credit card fraud and deals drugs on the side. K-Luv {Anthony Mackie} is a member of the "V-Dubs" ("Visitation Valley Mafia"), an African-American street gang. Lincoln {Ken Leung} is a rising figure in the Chinese Mafia. Gentrification forces Nick's family to move out of their home in the Mission District into Hunter's Point where they are harassed by the V-Dubs. K-Luv's side business of selling bootleg compact discs leads him to enlist Nick's help to bootleg CDs and to negotiate a truce with Lincoln. Lincoln conducts an affair with his boss' daughter Angela {T.V. Carpio}, a Stanford student engaged to a medical student classmate."The DVD-movie is a shortening of a series planned for TV, and it really moves. Still and all, it holds together extremely well. The high-point of the threatened violence for me was a confrontation between the V-Dubs and the Chinese Mafia on a basketball court in Chinatown in San Francisco.In this scene on a basketball court, Anthony Mackey explains the facts of life to Ken Leung, to wit, that any gang war fought between the Chinese Mafia and the V-Dubs will be fought in Chinatown, not in Hunters Point; or impliedly, H.P. is already a waste land, whereas Chinatown depends on tourists and "business as usual" and would be enormously adversely impacted by a gang war while H.P. would be essentially unaffected. Leung gets the point: compared to street African-Americans, Chinatown Chinese are, like, liquor-running, Italian-businessmen during Prohibition, if racism historically had confined them to small geographical areas within large American cities.The high point of the movie's actual violence, for me, was the fatal confrontation between Ben Crowley and Darris Love in a public bathroom; although a previous, surprise execution of an African-American child was also extremely chilling.Do see this movie. It's very good and it's available at Netflix. It does not disappoint.

good gangsta movie but funny

This is a great movie, that shows a lot of detail about how life can be in different parts of San Francisco.

Too deep for cable to follow through with their agreement with Spike Lee to make it into a series. See why...

Been looking for this flick for a minute..

This movie is great! Gritty underbelly sort of story. Typical Spike Lee "real life" story played by guys you believe. Not a happy ending kind of movie but well worth the watch!

I was robbed dvd was not in case and factory seal was broken

Item is as expected...thanks

Ottimo grazie

Love this movie. Too bad the show never took off as it had so much promise.

great product

This film is all over the place. I fell asleep with this one

very much under-rated spike lee flick