The Director, Director X is one of my favorite music video directors, having years of experience in directing hip-hop videos, X has a very clear style and technique and it looks great on the big screen. Shots are cleanly composed and everything looks as good as it should. The main leads are all attractive, some of the costume design looks cool, and there are tons of flashy cars and opulence on display. It looks about as good as the biggest budget music video and wears a lot of that hip-hop music video style on its sleeve, many establishing shots blend into scenes not uncommon in the best looking rap video set. Oh and the gunshots sounded incredible, nothing too spectacular about the few action scenes, but the gunshots were thunderous.

Trevor Jackson is a bright young actor with tons of potential. Though not given much to work with in terms of a script, he manages to make Priest a charismatic on-screen figure. Though it’s not much, the actor showed the ability to carry a lackluster script to the point where I thought it would go into some different places due to the commitment of the actor.  Jason Mitchell, who I’m also a fan of, from Straight Outta Compton and Kong, is the best part of this movie. His character, though also suffering due to the poor script, has the films most humorous lines and succeeds again mostly on the natural charisma of the actor.

To call this movie SuperFly, knowing the style and tone of the original, it’s extremely frustrating that this film does nothing new or nothing particularly interesting. We’ve all seen this very same movie before, but usually done in a way that’s memorable, or at the very least interesting and SuperFly does none of those things. This film is an empty exercise in following convention to the point were this movie barely exists on its own merits. None of the ideas here are original, none of these characters are interesting, and everything just seems to happen without any noticeable stakes or consequences. Characters are empty archetypes without any depth, backstory, or reason to exist outside of moving the plot around. Our main character Priest is another perfect protagonist, which is something I’ve grown to hate over the years. He’s the coolest guy, best fighter, smartest person, and has everything he needs; and that’s pretty much his character for the entire movie. Nothing to test his character, nothing to push the character into acting outside of himself, just minor inconveniences solved in the most basic way possible.  His backstory? He’s a smart kid in the game and plans ahead. Parents? Love? Passion? Nope, he likes money I guess? Around him are his equally vapid entourage including his girlfriends, one of whom’s name I still don’t remember.  One is into the arts, that we know because we see her in a gallery once, and the other is more street level because she yells at strippers and smokes blunts. That’s all there is to them, they are apparently ‘day 1s’ and I only know that because they kept saying it. Nothing about their relationship matters and they only show up for plot reasons or the random sex scene, because bosses have 2 girlfriends?  His partner is the typical hothead partner but doesn’t get that one big “oh this guy is a loose cannon” scene to establish himself as being unique. He’s just around for the celebration montages.

Other characters also seem to exist as nothing but parody or cameo. The film juggles maybe 3 main antagonists and none of them display why Priest considers them to be threats. One is a jealous rival who is jealous because…..reasons? Though being part of the Snow Patrol (we will get to them later) he dislikes Priest for no reason besides plot and he’s a hot head I guess. The other is a former mentor character that clashes with Priest on a philosophical level played by a very bored and wasted Micheal K Williams. I expected some kind of constant threat in regards to those characters, but nope, they disappear and reappear when convenient and I forgot about them the when they weren’t on screen. Let’s not forget about the dirty cops that show up far too late into the story to care, it was intended to heighten the stakes, but up to that point, it was clear that Priest could handle anything coming his way in about 15 minutes.

This film also tries to combine the gritty and the socially complex with an almost cartoonish glee for the criminal world. This is a film where one of the main protagonists are a group called the Snow Patrol, a rival multimillion-dollar drug organization in Atlanta known for their entire crew being draped in white clothing. A giant illegal drug enterprise basically being G.I. JOE villains, wearing all white, driving all white vehicles, and even having all white guns. Hearing that, one wouldn’t really expect virtue signaling in regards to the very real and deadly recent trend of police shootings, would you? Well they did, a minor 2nd act plot regarding a side character being killed by a dirty cop gets played as the saddest moment of the film, including the only time characters cry on film for a character we’ve only seen 3 times previously, and an extended funeral scene with singing and slam poetry. Its just such an odd addition in a sea of already strange ones and ends with a hilarious payoff later in the film, humor may be relative because I was the only one laughing.

It’s one thing to be empty and cliche, there can be a lot of fun in that arena, but this film doesn’t commit to any interesting idea and plays everything really safe. Every move is predictable, not because of foreshadowing or story structure, but because it follows this genre’s staples to the T. It felt like the creators were afraid to do anything different in fear of alienating the obvious audience. It plays like Empire for the drug game, a collection of scenes loosely connected by a plot that offers nothing in terms of risk or meaningful conflict. Even the action suffers from either lack of budget or lack of vision. Out of the many shootouts, none offer anything even visually, in terms of uniqueness. Slow-mo drive by? Done, with no flair for the dramatic. A car chase in luxury vehicles? Sure but we don’t wanna mess up the cars too bad so it looks like 2 fast cars are following each other lazily. Its frustrating how boring this film was, in every way. Not even attractive people wearing nice clothes could make things move at an interesting pace.