Gimme the Loot

The début feature Adam Leon has just about everything I want to see in a small, low-budget, New York indie movie. Contained within this 81-minute story about Malcolm and Sofia, two young down-and-out graffiti writers whose big dream is to tag the Shea Stadium home run apple, is a wealth of subtle observations about class, race, friendship, and the difficulties of navigating the complex hierarchies of modern urban life. But while those observations are all there, they never become heavy-handed or weigh down the buoyant energy of this sweet but unsentimental story. Instead, the subtext coasts beautifully and almost invisibly beneath the surface of this original take on the heist movie, the love story, and the urban coming-of-age comedy/drama. 

I saw the film a week after seeing what was, as far as I'm concerned, 2012’s worst picture: David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, which consists of nothing but hamfisted and pretentious ideas about money and class. Unlike Cronenberg, whose attempt to use digital technology to tell a small story about big ideas fails by not actually having a story to tell, Leon uses his digital camera in much the same way that Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch and Jonathan Demme used 16mm in the 1980s. Gimme the Loot is a rough-and-tumble, run- and-gun film whose production feels liberated from the traditional rules of filmmaking but whose narrative manages to follow all the traditions of good storytelling. Like so many indie films, its action is contained within a short period of time, about two days, and concentrates only on a handful of characters with a very clear goal. Within that simple context, the film is able to entertain while simultaneously and deftly exploring its many themes. 

The best aspect of the picture is the relationship between its two leads. Tashiana Washington and Ty Hickson both give natural, nuanced performances, and their dialogue is fresh and engaging; it never feels like the improvisatory riffing that seems to have taken over the indie film world in the last decade. The movie’s graffiti-centered storyline could easily have taken place in the 1980s or ‘90s, when I lived in New York, and the tastefully restrained cinematography and shrewd use of music from various eras also give the film a timeless quality. Adam Leon and his actors paint a vivid portrait of friendship and summer in the city; this is a classic New York story that belongs in the same company as She’s Gotta Have It, Something Wild, Mean Streets, Hannah and Her Sisters and Metropolitan.