I always get a vicarious thrill from movies about lifestyles that are interesting to watch but that I wouldn't want to go anywhere near in real life.
This includes such "nice place to visit, wouldn't wanna live there" classics as "Goodfellas", "The Godfather", "Scarface", "Taxi Driver", and other hardboiled horror tales about really bad people doing really bad things.
That's what attracted me to STRAIGHT OUTTA TOMPKINS (Indican Pictures, 2015), an intensely absorbing story about a bright young student named Gene (writer-director Zephyr Benson, son of Robby Benson and Karla DeVito) who, despite being a decent enough sort himself, finds himself sucked into an urban-underbelly nightmare of hard drugs, big money, and really scary people.
Gene gets to this bad place in increments, starting off as a promising athlete (college scouts are already showing up) whose troubled home life steers him into first using and then selling weed.
Great success in this area puts him in contact with big-time drug dealer Cruz (Jon McCormick), who seems deceptively nice at first (despite a proclivity for sudden violence) but gets more ominous the deeper Gene sinks into the morass of really high-level narcotics, both as a paranoid worker drone and an increasingly-addicted user.
Zephyr Benson the writer-director gives his movie a flashback/narration style similar to "Goodfellas" except Gene has a basic decency and naivete' that lend his descent into fear and degradation a much more tragic edge.
Moreover, he aspires not to be a gangster but a college baseball pitcher, albeit with a very lucrative side income, before this aspect of his life invades and consumes it like an ever-growing virus. Knowing that he'll eventually get hooked on heroin (as revealed early on in the movie as well as on the DVD's box art) just makes us dread what's to come even more.
Direction, editing, and overall story progression are excellent and maintain interest throughout every stage of the narrative, with some really beautiful montage sequences. Benson has a knack for catchy dialogue and narration, seamlessly blending the lighter moments (few as they are) with the darker, scarier stuff.
Benson is also a fine actor, making Gene likable despite his unwise life decisions and character weaknesses (most of which we ascribe to his broken home life and desperation to survive in NYC after being abandoned).
There's an equally fine supporting cast, including Adonis Rodriguez as Gene's best friend Ivan, who refuses to cross the line with him into hard drugs, and Jon McCormick who is superb as the dangerously unstable Cruz. Whoopi Goldberg shows up for a cameo as Gene's sympathetic landlady, and Troma fans will spot Lloyd Kaufman as a foul-mouthed gym coach.
Sometimes a movie is so good that when the final minutes come, you wish it didn't have to end. I not only enjoyed watching STRAIGHT OUTTA TOMPKINS, but consider myself rather fortunate that I happened to do so.
Buy it at Indican Pictures
TECH SPECS
Runtime: 91 minutes
Format: HD
Sound: Dolby SR
Rating: Pending
Country: USA
Website: www.straight-outta-tompkins.com
Genre: Urban, Crime, Drama
Bonus: Trailers
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