Waist deep (spoilers)

One thing I love about movies is that they can delve into the human psyche as to what would happen if your family was in trouble. We get to see human beings at their core, or what creators of film believe we as humans would do if put in that position. In that vein comes a movie about a single father struggling to stay out of jail while trying to instill a sense of hope in his 9 or 10 year old son. The movie gets off to a quick start because in the first 5 minutes, the man’s car is stolen, with his kid inside and we are off to the races. Model/singer/rapper/actor Tyrese Gibson stars as the man with 36ish hours to come up with $500,000.00 or his son will be killed. Right off the bat our leading man is strapped and puts 2 men down while chasing his stolen vehicle on foot. We are made very aware that this man has been in the street before and is not afraid of getting down and dirty.


His first order of business is to threaten an incredibly gorgeous Meagan Good, who he feels helped mark him as a target for getting jacked. Meagan is a terrible actress but looks good in her underwear so she’ll go far in the urban film market. What follows is a string of clichés and obvious “twists” in the middle section and the yawns come out. Tyrese and his lady rob banks, rob pimps, break into a house, steal cars oh and find time for some sex, as well. He somehow finds the money, but as luck would have it the kidnapper wants to kill everyone involved after receiving the money. Shocking, I know. Rapper The Game plays our villain as a tattooed, butcher knife wielding marble mouth who cannot speak without shouting swear words like every other villain in these kinds of movies.


To be fair, there is a better than decent car chase in the final third that mostly held my attention and instead of ending in the most obvious cliché, they find the second most obvious cliché to end their movie. Now, in getting back to my original thought when I rented this movie, the director obviously believes a man would sacrifice himself in order to set his family free and for making that choice I have to respect the movie. Tyrese is fine as an actor. I mean he isn’t going to win any awards but he is serviceable and with rock hard muscles he probably will continue to find work in the action genre. Overall, I wish I hadn’t wasted my money, but I can chalk it up to a study in the human condition.