8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An "OZ" rehash movie - but a very good one!, December 12, 2004
One of the recurring motion picture subjects that resurfaces yearly (at least) is the inside prison movie. The public's curiosity about what happens behind locked bars is endless. The long running HBO series OZ added to the numbers of that audience and that seems to be what spawned DOING HARD TIME.
Director Preston A. Whitmore II understands this genre of films and has taken a rather simple story and told it well. Strapping young Boris Kodjoe is devastated when his young son is accidentally killed during a drug deal between two thugs who are arrested and jailed for drug crimes but not for the killing of Kodjoe's son. Revenge blooms during Kodjoe's growing escape through alcohol and on one drunken night he assaults a police officer and gains his goal of arrest and jail time in the same prison where the perpetrators are doing hard time.
How this revenge ultimately plays out is the gist of the film. In the prison we meet all the usual prisoner types and they are actually well crafted and acted by a crew that includes Michael K. Williams, Sticky Fingaz, William L. Johnson, etc and the other side of the bars by Steven Bauer, Giancarlo Esposito and Jazmin Lewis. Not a great or an important film, but a tightly directed and convincingly portrayed prison flick. Grady Harp, December 2004
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Unrealistic, but worth a look ;>), March 1, 2005
The only thing that made this movie "credible" was the acting from the dude with the cornrows from "The Wire" -series by Hbo-.
He plays that H-mo thug on that show, although he is constantly typecasted as a "knuckle-head-grimy individual" he does it superb,he kept this movie gangsta when it was "soft".
Story goes like this,Boris Kodjo loses his son in a gangwar crossfire and Kodjo's character "Michael Mitchell" starts to lose it sort of mentally and just can't cope. He eventually loses his wife too when she can no longer deal with his constant drinking and giving up on life mentality as a result of his son's death. There is a a supposedly "dramatic" scene where he is ying in a bubble filled bathtub crying and drinking himself into a "stupor" ala a bottle of jack Daniels..but the scene looks more like he was awaiting his wife to come and join him in the tub and get busy...and Boris (sorry to say)
CAN'T ACT his way out of a paperbag! I mean the crying scenes looked like he was laughing, no tears, oh god!
People like him fall into the "Lucky" territory,
you have no talent but just got "lucky" and it never hurts to
get by on looks neither.
He then plans his revenge on doing research on how to make a "paper machaey" gun???? that blows fire when you attach a rubberband to it??? like a sling-shot...I'm sorry I didn't get that part..they got too "MacGuyer" right there.
He gets pulled over one day for drunk driving,gives the cop a WICKED beatdown with an 8-ball in a sock...then sent to jail....the SAME jail that the gangbangers responsible for his son's death are at. And then the movie turns into "Bad Boys"...the Sean Penn version...you know the rest.
Anyways Boris Kodjo co-produced this movie so that's why he's on the cover art to lure the chicks in...but he is honestly bearly in the movie until towards the end (he was apparently too busy calling the shots as co-producer)ALOT of the time was taken up with the gangbangers he was after with them doing some drug deals with "Dirty" played by Sticky fingers from the rap group onyx, the movie was turning into "OZ" for about 1 hour of the film and made you forget about the original plot of revenge..I was getting so deep involved in the subplot of "who is trying to get dis money" or "you workin' for me now!" dialogue that when the real plot came back I lost interest.
There are ALOT of men's butt nudity scenes in the film including kodjo's, the ladies'll like that one.
Overall the movie is worth a look though even though it's
predictable and poorly acted by Kodjo.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't Come Close to "OZ" ...but, April 8, 2007
OZ, in the opinion of someone I know who was in prison, was closer to reality than most of these American-made prison flicks which are so afraid of REALITY and sex, and usually brush over or totally leave out the one thing that is VERY IMPORTANT to every man in jail.
I've been told there is so much sex in prison, men get more of it there than they get in real life. Funny how hetero males "transfer" so quickly behind bars and suddenly don't find male/male sex so "disgusting."
I liked this movie, regardless, but I'm a reality freak. Give me ALL of it and tell it to the young so they'll know what to expect. It might just keep them from breaking the law.
The acting here isn't anything special, but Boris Kodjoe proves that he SHOULD take more acting lessons, perhaps he can cross over and become as big as Denzel Washington. There aren't many black "matinee idol" types gracing the screen these days. In America, they'd rather put Flava Flav in a big movie than someone like Boris Kodjoe.
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