Smart, genuine 'Paid in Full' evocative of 'Goodfellas'
By Margaret A. McGurk
The Cincinnati Enquirer
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| PAID IN FULL (Rated R for violence, pervasive language, some strong sexuality, drug content.) Three and One-Half Stars (Good-to-Excellent). Wood Harris and Mekhi Phifer co-star in one of the best crime stories of the year, based on the true story of a retired drug kingpin from Harlem. Directed by Charles Stone III. Dimension Films, 93 minutes. |
That moment of chilling drama kicks off one of the best crime stories of the year, a movie good enough to rescue the urban gangster genre from the flood of cynical exploitation that followed John Singleton's startling "Boyz N the Hood."
The movie is based on the real-life recollections of a retired criminal known as A. Z., whose teenage exploits in the Harlem drug trade of the 1980s made him an outlaw legend. At least a half-dozen rap stars have written about A. Z. and his partners Alpo and Richard Porter.
On film, they have been fictionalized into Ace (Wood Harris), Rico (rapper Cam'ron) and Mitch (Mekhi Phifer), young men intoxicated by easy money and lionized for the wealth they share. The movie keys into their blind euphoria in a scene where dealers and friends party on the street surrounded by tricked-out luxury cars. Fur coats adorn every back, gold chains glint at every neck, and every hand clutches cash the way children hold toys.
The movie, written by Matthew Cirulnick and Thulani Davis, centers on Ace, the one partner burdened with insight. He is smart enough to avoid the drug trade early on, but succumbs when a mysterious neighbor called Lulu (Esai Morales) offers him easy entree into the business. Even then, his instincts warn him that trouble — usually provoked by Rico, the trio's loose cannon — is never far away.
The heart of the movie is in the friendship between Ace and Mitch. When Ace is just a shy kid working for the neighborhood dry cleaner (Chi McBride), Mitch is the neighborhood star. Ace is "boring," as his girlfriend (Regina Hall) lovingly tells him; he starts dealing drugs only to make money. But Mitch lives for excitement, for the "love" he feels everywhere he goes.
"I love the game," he tells Ace. "I love the hustle."
Harris is note-perfect as Ace; he takes the character from gawky kid to tough businessman with sure-footed stealth. Phifer, who just keeps getting better with every film, gleams with charisma. The film achieves piercing authenticity not just in their environment but in the way they talk to one another, the way they argue, the way they make one another laugh.
First-time feature director Charles Stone III achieves a kind of muted grandeur as he plots the friends' trajectory toward inevitable, and heartbreaking, tragedy. He makes good use of a rich score written by Frank Fitzpatrick and Vernon Reid with soundtrack contributions from a solid crew of hip-hop artists.
"Paid in Full" bears marked similarities to Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas," especially in its structure — an extended flashback narrated by the central character. Even more so, it resembles "Mean Streets," Scorsese's profound, sorrowful portrait of friends drowning in a world of evil. It even looks something like "Mean Streets," in its stark, gloss-free view of the characters' world. This version of Harlem (much of it shot in Toronto) is not the lurid hellhole most filmmakers imagine; it is essentially a down-at-the-heels small town infected with a fast-growing virus.
The movie is creeping into theaters with almost no fanfare, which is a shame both for a film that deserves more respect and for fans who risk missing out on a rare example of a smart, honest, emotionally genuine tale.
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