Fresh (Boaz Yakin, 1994)

Fresh seems like an easy movie to dislike. It is, in fact, so easy that I would have trouble finding fault with a person who didn't like it. For one, it is written and directed by Boaz Yakin, a person who has done nothing worth note since and did almost nothing worth note before it. For another, it straddles a strange line between the lower-class America social observation of something like The Wire (clearly somewhat influenced by this movie) and a weirdo Hollywood fantasy about "The Hood." Where the fantasy element comes in is its plot and structure: young chess whiz is just trying to get by in a poor neighborhood until a horrific tragedy sparks him to take revenge; manipulates gangster thugs and the police like chess opponents.

But what differentiates it is actually part of what makes it sound awful on paper. The chess metaphor, while somewhat hackneyed and on the nose, actually functions as a higher symbol of the quote-unquote civilized life Fresh wants to escape to. And through this symbol the film implies that both worlds operate on similar levels of ruthlessness and while Fresh may have succeeded in escaping, the cost required of him to escape -- sacrificing his childhood, figuratively, and the life of a friend literally -- and the not-so-different world he is escaping raise questions about whether everything he did was worth it. The ending, which I won't discuss in much detail, is what finally separates the film from being a classic underdog formula. It somehow hits home the idea that the father figure Fresh looks up to is more deserving than he actually appeared of his isolated status and the implication early on that Fresh is not supposed to be hanging out with him. Even though the father, played by Samuel L. Jackson before he'd developed into SAMUEL L. JACKSON, makes attempts to separate himself from the drugs and gang-related affairs of their neighborhood, it's clear he is operating on a similar level of cutthroat competition and that it is only through his encouragement that Fresh becomes the kind of person that can do what he eventually ends up doing. So when we get to the end, the victory is far less sweet and far more bitter than it appears it will be. This, I guess, is what wins the movie over for me, even if I can understand how some might be put off by its occasional devolvement into what Armond White so cleverly termed "poverty porn."