Indeed, as the camera takes its initial survey of the faces and figures crisscrossing MacArthur Park—LA’s ironically Edenic home to the homeless, the addicted and the predators who feed off them—what’s striking is how self-possessed everybody seems about being dispossessed. No one has his rap down better than Cody (Thomas Jefferson Byrd in an Oscarworthy performance), a jazz trumpeter who’s traded his horn for a crackpipe and, in doing so, lost his music, his wife and his son. The possibility of rapprochement and redemption reaches out like a soft breeze when the son (Brandon Adams) comes seeking his dad’s cooperation in settling some legal business.
But Cody doesn’t know whether to crave rescue or fear it, and besides, the fates—and the self-delusions of his fellow fringe dwellers—are about to loose shrapnel in all directions. The peerless ensemble includes former Saturday Night Live regular Ellen Cleghorne, Sticky Fingaz as a velvet-tongued pimp, Sydney TamiiaPoitier as his latest recruit, Nuñez as Cody’s jive-talking dealer pal, and Balthazar Getty as the latter’s latest client—a coked-up, on-the-skids TV actor so recognizable, Charlie Sheen oughtta sue.
On top of all this, there’s a vivid hip-hop soundtrack. But Wirth’s direction itself has plenty of rhythm.
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