Gimme the Loot bit.ly/1biRp0v Click Image For Price Gimme the Loot Malcolm and Sofia are the most determined teenage graffiti-writers in the Bronx. But when a rival gang buffs their latest masterpiece, they hatch a plan to get their revenge by planning the ultimate graffiti tag – to “bomb” the New York Mets’ home run apple. The only hitch is that they need to raise $500 to pull off their spectacular scheme. Over the course of two whirlwind, sun-soaked summer days, Malcolm and Sofia travel on an epic urban adventure involving black market spray cans, illicit bodegas, stolen sneakers, a high stakes heist, and a beautiful girl whose necklace is literally their key to fame. GIMME THE LOOT is the charming, funny, daring story of two taggers that will do anything to become the biggest writers in the city.Writer-director Adam Leon hits pay dirt with his first full-length feature, the very appealing Gimme the Loot. Shot for a measly $165,000 at various locations in New York City, the film has been lauded at prestigious festivals like Cannes and South by Southwest, and it’s not hard to see why. At its heart, literally and otherwise, are two teenage graffiti artists, Sofia and Malcolm (Tashiana Washington and Ty Hickson, amateurs who seem preternaturally comfortable in front of the camera), who are in search of every “writer’s” holy grail: they plan to “bomb the apple,” meaning tag the enormous apple that rises up from the center field stands at Shea Stadium (since replaced by Citi Field) every time a New York Met hits a home run. The feat has been pondered for a good 20 years, but no one’s come close to pulling it off. No worries, says Malcolm, who claims to know a security guard at the stadium who, for $500, will let them inside when the team is out of town (as we soon learn, Malcolm claims a lot of things). And so begins Sofia and Malcolm’s quixotic, often amusing quest for the cash. This involves burglary, pushing dope, lying, selling stolen goods, and other subterfuge, none of which they’re at all good at; the closest Malcolm, who’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, comes to actually scoring is when he sells some pot to a fetching, teasing rich girl, but we can tell that won’t end well. But it’s the journey that matters, not the destination, and while we know next to nothing about their home life, parents, school, and so on, we care about these two kids, neither of whom is half as gangsta as they’d like to think. In spite, or maybe because, of their constant sniping and profanity-laden put-downs (the swearing is nonstop), they care about each other, too. There’s nothing glamorous about the New York director Leon shows us, but everything about the film–the look, the pacing, the dialogue, and especially the music, which is light on hip-hop in favor of old skool funk and some wonderful gospel/R&B–is natural and right. You might say that Gimme the Loot swings. –Sam Graham bit.ly/1biRmBI September 29, 2013 at 11:25PM
Posted on: Sun, 29 Sep 2013 16:40:47 +0000
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