Filmed in 2005 but not released until this year on DVD, this was a compelling story about rich teens acting all Hip Hop in Pacific Palisades who drive into East L.A. for kicks and getting involved with one of the gangs there, with pretty awful results. The teens are essentially brainless pleasure-seeking partiers (many critics derided them for being one-dimensional, but I think that was the whole point showing the shallowness of their lives and the bad choices they made, seeking better kicks without really understanding what they were getting into, their naivete about gangs and their misplaced self-confidence in their own sexuality to keep them popular and liked and safe, was shown to be demonstrably inappropriate. Their attitudes, weaned on parental neglect, casual sex, and playing roles they weren't up to (the kids pretend to be hip hop without ever really understanding that culture; everyone in the film is shown to be a phony pretending to be someone they're not), are mired in superficiality (one of the characters says, when facing a choice to join the gang if she'll sleep with three of their members, says, "why not? It's just sex!" a telling moment). Most IMDb reviewers panned the movie but I felt it was an honest and intriguing drama about choices and consequences. Anne Hathaway's performance is a far cry from her Disneyesque cute roles in PRINCESS DIARIES and even DEVIL WEARS PRADA she sells the character of the vapid, shallow rich kid whose attitude about life and love and sex ("it's just a performance, after all") quite nicely that's what drew me to the film, and I felt she did a good job. Freddy Rodriguez, whose performances I've always liked since he did SIX FEET UNDER, is very good as a gang member/drug dealer and despite those who claimed all the characters were on-dimensional, I felt he added a lot of subtle depth to his role humanizing it beyond the cardboard gang member he started out to be. There is a depth behind his eyes and behind his words as he confronts Hathaway and her sexy friends, and becomes as manipulated by them even while trying manipulate them for his own purposes. The other gang members were also very convincing or at least they seemed so to me. Laura San Giacomo and Michael Biehn are very good as in small roles as Anne's misunderstood but inattentive parents, who are facing their own marital issues. The film ends on an intentional note of ambiguity but one I felt was quite effective the story stops while you're still thinking about it. The specific conclusion who dies and who doesn't isn't the point and in the end doesn't really matter either way, it's the inevitable result of the poor choices and lack of any kind of personal responsibility in the lives of these kids that is the point of the film. Like THIRTEEN, I felt this was a very interesting examination of youth and its choices and influences and vulnerability. I may be eons away from the age group portrayed by the teens in this film, but I found the picture to be a satisfying and involving human drama with real performances and real issues.
