Product Details

• Actors: Kathy Baker, George Cheung, John Savage, James Hong, Ken Leung
• Directors: Spike Lee
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Showtime Ent.
• DVD Release Date: February 7, 2006
• Run Time: 113 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000CCD1TS
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,362 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Sucker Free City is an original film directed by Spike Lee that takes a riveting look at the seductive, dangerous world and life choices of a diverse group of young people inextricably caught up in the unique gang culture of San Francisco. When racial tension erupts and emotions collide three young men from different ethic backgrounds perpetrate low-level crimes that eventually infringe upon each other’s neighborhoods. As their lives intersect on the streets, will they come to realize they are not all that different from one another or will they fight to keep their neighborhoods?

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid movie - accurate potrayal, March 31, 2006

By 

Ken McCarthy (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sucker Free City (DVD)

As someone who lived in San Francisco for ten years and spent time in the Mission, Chinatown, and Hunters Point, this movie is not only entertaining, it's also an extremely accurate portrayal of life in these particular neighborhoods.

If you're a San Franciscan, you've got to see it. If you're not from SF, but are curious about what's beyond the tourist brochures, this movie is it.

The only thing missing is documentation of the insanely corrupt political culture of the city, but hey, the film maker covered a lot of ground.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Hardly a realistic portrayal, January 13, 2011

By 

PCM2 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sucker Free City (DVD)

I'm sorry to say it, but as a "realistic" portrayal of life in San Francisco, Spike Lee's film falls totally flat.

Nobody in San Francisco dresses like that. Nobody in San Francisco talks like that. The characters all look and act like they grew up in Brooklyn (which I guess is not surprising, considering the source).

There are no white families of four living in Victorian mansions in the Mission District. Those houses all got carved up into flats decades ago, and they currently rent for about $900 a room. And I question Lee's decision to base the "white" portion of his story out of the Mission in the first place; the Mission has always been a Latino neighborhood. It's not yuppie or middle-class at all, either. There's been a lot of gentrification, to be sure, but by totally ignoring the Mission's true character, Lee wastes one of the best settings in the City.

As the story opens, our family of four is being evicted from their rented house. But what makes this family poor? Mom and dad seem well-kept, articulate, college educated. They seem to have every material possession they'd ever want. The son works in finance and so presumably went to college himself (but somehow never left home). The sister does -- something? So where did all the money go? Did they just look at their bank statement one morning and say, "Whoops"? Again, it's just not realistic, which detracts from Lee's premise.

Furthermore, if a middle class white family of four could no longer afford to rent a house in San Francisco, they wouldn't move to Hunter's Point -- a predominantly African-American neighborhood with the highest crime rate in the City, which even the opening credits describe as having one of the highest cancer rates in the nation. Apparently this family doesn't have any friends, because if they did, their friends would all tell them they're crazy. For a guy seemingly obsessed with race, it seems strange that Spike Lee can ignore the fact that this family would never make this decision. They would have picked up and moved to the East Bay or south to the Peninsula long ago, because they have those options. There are reasons why ghettos perpetuate and why people can't escape bad neighborhoods like Hunter's Point that have to do with a lot more than the price of real estate, and by ignoring this fact, Lee undermines his story.

And that brings us to the real problem with this "film": There is no story. As the pilot to a TV series, maybe there might have been some direction to take these characters, but there was never any series. So what we have is just a few ideas having to do with races clashing in a city Spike Lee knows little about, and it all ends in midair, roll credits. With stronger acting and a better script, it might have been more compelling. As it is, I think it's one for hardcore Spike Lee fans only.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, December 2, 2008

By 

Jennifer E. Crowley (Columbia, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sucker Free City (DVD)

This movie is great! Gritty underbelly sort of story. Typical Spike Lee "real life" story played by guys you believe. Not a happy ending kind of movie but well worth the watch!