“Wow, I am so off my blog game. Life has gotten really busy lately, and while I’m keeping up with the important new releases, I haven’t had time to consider the questionable ones. Nor have I had time to supplement with at home DVD’s. Srsly, my unwatched DVD pile is holding a pretty steady stack size.
But after a couple slow single movie weekends, I did manage to get in a second one this time, even if it took me a while to find time to post about it. (Very much looking foward to the potential three movie weekend I’ve got coming up).
I have mixed feelings about this one, mostly stemming from the fact that the film was severely miss-marketed. Granted, had it been presented more accurately, I may not have had as much interest, but if I knew what to expect, I could have appreciated it more.
Wow all the way to paragraph four for the summary. Okay then. Sleight is about a young kid, Bo, who after high school is left to take care of his little sister after their parents’ death. Despite his best efforts, his means of income are limited to performing for tips as a street magician by day and selling drugs by night. Oh, and there may be a little more to his magical abilities than meets the eye.
The marketing sells the magical aspect, basically setting it up to be another Chronicle: a small scale and low budget twist on the big blockbuster superhero genre. It wasn’t that at all. Yes, there was some of that element to it, but it was more of an afterthought. The film was really about Bo trying to escape his current situation and make a better life for him and his sister. He just happened to have telekinetic abilities (I feel powers isn’t quite the right word in context of the story.)
So watching it felt like a big bait and switch, like I was not seeing the movie I signed up for. That tarnished my attitude towards it at the time. Still, even then, I knew that I really was seeing something special, I just needed to take a step back from it to process. And it really is a unique way of approaching this story, making it something fresh instead of one we’ve seen a million times over. Who knows, we may one day look back at it as fondly as we do on Chronicle, but for different reasons.
One last thought, shout out to Dule Hill for playing against type as a very un-Charlie-eque drug dealing boss. Obvs, I say that as a West Wing fan, but I saw this with a Psych fan who also apprecited the vastly different character. That alone was worth the price of admission, and it looked good on him. As much as I absolutely adore his sweet side, I wouldn’t mind seeing him break bad more often. Really, let’s just see him more often, yeah?
Sleight – \m/ \m/ \m/ \n”