Adam Leon (2012)

Adam Leon used to be a production assistant to Woody Allen – perhaps the title of Leon’s first feature is a nod to Allen’s second, Take the Money and Run. The scenario is promising.  Two young African-American graffiti writers, Malcolm and Sofia, plan to ‘bomb’ the New York Mets’ Home Run Apple – something which (the film’s opening explains) has never been achieved.  What motivates graffiti artists is interesting (not that Malcolm – who signs himself ‘Shakes’ – and Sofia are up to much artistically).  Is it something more than ‘I woz here’?  How much have graffitist numbers been affected by the advent of electronic social media (which, to a large extent, are newer ways of saying ‘I am here’)?    Gimme the Loot was filmed on location in New York City, and it feels like some time since the city’s been seen in the way it is here.  There’s a sequence during which Malcolm and Sofia walk along chatting (they’re not a couple, except as graffitists).  How long they talk for is conveyed by shifts in the light:  Adam Leon and his editor Morgan Faust construct the sequence so that the conversation is nearly continuous but – as the pair carry on moving in the same direction and as if along the same street – quick cuts show the arrival of dusk then twilight.

I liked this bit best because the allure of the changing light (the cinematographer is Jonathan Miller) is sufficient for you to ignore the words that Malcolm and Sofia are speaking.   What you hear when there’s not this visual diversion is ‘shit’ or ‘fuck’ every second word, ‘bitch’ or ‘nigger’ every third or fourth:  although this sounds realistic, the poverty of the kids’ vocabulary actually reflects the poverty of Adam Leon’s script.  There’s also a fair amount of uninspired improvisation going on between the pair, and between them and other characters:  I eventually walked out of the film (although it’s short – only eighty minutes) during a lengthy argument between Malcolm and another man about whether they were on the sixth or seventh floor of an apartment block in which they’re planning a robbery.  Graffiti doesn’t appear to mean much in particular to Malcolm or Sofia – or to Leon:  it’s merely the basis for a weak crime story and clichéd social-racial sex comedy.  The rhythm of the protagonists’ chatter is meant to make it delightful; who they are is supposed to make their petty crime and small-time drug-dealing appealing too.   The audience in Curzon Soho seemed to lap this up but it worried me that Malcolm and Sofia were black and (I assumed) poorly educated; I wondered whether people would find the pair so charmingly ‘innocent’ if they hadn’t been.  Adam Leon is white and (I assume) well educated and I think Gimme the Loot is essentially condescending.  Ty Hickson, who plays Malcolm, might be a good actor in the making.  As Sofia, Tashiana Washington looks merely a confident performer.

9 May 2013