A very ironic title for this film, as the lead character “Connie” played by Robert Pattinson embarks on a dangerous journey. The movie starts out with Connie’s mentally handicapped brother in a psychiatric session with a doctor. He is then promptly yanked from the room thereby ending the session for a bank by Connie. Now here comes the first “hmmm” for me.
So, while they’re all dressed up as construction workers, I guess they thought it wasn’t enough. They decided to pull a literal blackface by dawning masks of two African American men (reminds me of the Boston Tea Party when they dressed up as Natives to overthrow a cargo ship…). History repeats. I wonder if they were too ashamed to be their OWN race while they do your dirt? Or were they just taking advantage of the racist views of “minorities” to get away with crime?
The teller from the bank they robbed was also black. She wasn’t harmed or anything but keep that in mind as I go along (underlined theme). Connie and his brother get away… for a little while, and then his brother gets caught because he ran through a glass window and fell (yikes). The disabled brother is then arrested and hauled off to jail where 98% (it was probably 100% but I’m giving it a little wiggle room) were black men (why’s that?).
As the day progresses, he finds out his brother is in the hospital (prison fight) and he takes off to see him. Connie finds his brother’s room which is guarded by a cop so he slips into a room to wait. The room belongs to an old black woman and he walks over to feed her orange juice (kinda messy but still nice). He watches the guard from a crack in the door and the guy finally leaves to grab a snack. Connie runs into the room, breaks the part of the bed he’s handcuffed to and slams him into a wheelchair. I honestly thought he’d get busted but he made it outside passed a black guard that was asleep at the front desk. He then finds a handicap transportation bus right in front of the hospital and jumps the line in front of a pair of elderly black couple (rude as fuck) to get on. The black couple continued to be kind, even giving him a wave and a goodbye as they left leaving Connie and his brother alone on the bus. The bus driver (a black man) was only supposed to make three stops, but since he had an unknown fugitive on board he just chalked it up to his job not booking the ride correctly and gave them a ride home anyways.
Connie and his brother end up stranded since “he didn’t have his house key” (who knows) and backtrack to the home of the elderly black couple they cut in line to hide out. The woman was nice so she let them in and gave Connie’s brother a room. This is when it gets SUPER fucking cringey. So the grandma has a granddaughter who’s sixteen years old. Yeahhhhh, that’s where this is going. After grandma goes to sleep, Connie decides to strike up a strange conversation with the girl.
Asking her how old she was didn’t seem to deter him from trying to fuck a literal child. He even made a comment about her “looking older… yeah, this girl right here. She looks twelve…
(ADULTIFICATION OF BLACK GIRLS IS A PROBLEM) and makes out with her on the couch… then a bed (ugh!). Finally some screams came from his brother’s room (I thought they heard me screaming) and it turns out… he grabbed the wrong guy. His face was bandaged up pretty good I guess he didn’t realize. He then makes a new plan to get his brother back and immediately enlists the help of the black child he just tried to have sex with.
Connie, the girl, and the (wrong) prisoner “borrow” (steal) the grandma’s car and drive off together. As the driver, Connie stops at a fast food place and has the girl grab them some food. A weird comment he made about how he wanted to “use” her phone made me feel like he’s been using black people throughout this ENTIRE film. When the girl comes back with the food, Connie takes off in the car for a few blocks and makes the random prisoner get cause he “needs to talk to her”. Now I’m thinking, this isn’t going to be good.. and it wasn’t. So the creep starts another weird conversation with this sixteen year old child about how “as fucked up as it is” he thinks that “something important is happening and it’s deeply connected to (his) purpose”. He also says that she’s “somehow connected to it as well” (GROOMING). Uhmm yeah, you tried to statutory rape her and then kidnapped her while stealing her grandmother’s car… I guess that’s how she’s connected. Good job.
The next scene is where the prisoner and Connie hop a fence to find some hidden money. In this dark, abandoned amusement park they start digging around for it making too much noise in the process. The security guard (black guy) catches the escaped prisoner and goes to find Connie. He finds him but Connie beats punches the guard in the face (a few too many times cause he was already passed out) and uncuffs the prisoner. When the cops show up (guard called them), they strike the guard of his clothes and dose him with acid. Fucking…. acid. A LOT of acid. The acid-dosing escaped prisoner hides and THEN Connie pretends that the black guard is the guy that broke into the park… and the cops believe it — even though the guard said there were two people? Oh but don’t worry, they find the other “person he must have been with”. That’s right. The black girl who was sitting in the car, waiting for them to come back had gotten out of the car cause she saw the park lights flip on.
So while “looking for the other suspect” they had Connie (with the escaped prisoner in hiding) who is pretending to be a guard turn on the lights to do a search. Well they grabbed her and as the guard was waking up, he started freaking out (as anyone would with that much acid in him).
They hold the girl and ask Connie (who’s in full guard gear and confusing the poor child) if she was the other person running around the park. He looks at her and says no (I half expected him to sell her out), but cops being cops they harass the shit out of her anyways and arrest her.
Two black lives ruined in one night, over what? That’s not counting the bus driver who was questioned by police over the escaped prisoner or the grandparents who has to put up money to get their granddaughter out of jail either. Also, not counting the black teller who broke policy to grab more money of the back instead of just giving them what she had in her drawer… she might have been fired too (Set It Off part 2) So, that’s actually six black lives that have probably been ruined by this asshole.
After the girl is taken away by police for existing… Connie and the convict take the guard’s security car and take off to his place (found the address on the guard’s ID). They slide to his place and start drinking up this guys stuff, making themselves at home, and of course arguing like idiots over how to sell the remaining acid. THEN is gets a little heated when the escaped prisoner gets drunk and gets a little too personal for Connie’s taste. And Connie can’t just say “I don’t want to talk about that”… nah, he lays into the guy telling him how much of a loser he is and how losers like him are “incapable of taking care of themselves” and he’s “either leeching off mommy or leeching off welfare or living off the government in jail”. As if he didn’t just borrow every black person possible to escape the police after a robbery he committed wearing an actual blackface. Bitch what? I think this movie should be called “How to use black people for your own selfish needs”.
The argument stops when the buzzer starts going off cause the ex con’s friend is finally there. First thing’s first… if you’re not black, you have ZERO RIGHTS to the word “nigga” or any variation of that word unless you’re trying to get stomped by some black people. There have been exceptions for those that are with their black friends and they can ONLY SAY IT WITH THEIR BLACK FRIENDS. Not the FRIENDS of their black friend; not a RANDOM BLACK person who looks like your black friend. ONLY your own personal black friends (unless given permission by all black people present). That’s the MFKN rules. Period. And yes, I know there’s a million ignorant people who just say it when there’s no black people around and THEY are what WE call “punk ass bitches” and “marks”. So… you know where this is going right? Yeah, the first thing out this dude’s mouth was “(question), nigga?” And I’m like… what tribe are YOU from, STEVE? Fuck outta here.
The rest of the film consists of Connie getting arrested and the ex con falling out of a window to his presumed death. All this movie did was leave a bad taste in my mouth. Using black people in so many ways and actually sexualizing a minor for one’s own DISGUSTING sexual “needs” (he should have been arrested for that too).
Not to mention the horrific irony of getting the guard arrested for being a junkie in the park and then doing a drug deal out of his apartment. Tasteless. It might be “just a film” but it’s a reminder of how lowkey real some of these things are. I mean, I know Robert Pattinson wanted to break away from the Twilight movie, but this?
Now, I’m going to go ahead and watch some black-friendly/black-oriented/black-made stuff to cleanse my cinematic pallet. This film was straight up TRASH and I could have done without it.
Woooosaaaahhhh…
Let all that gross ass energy out! Blegh! Or should I say *grabs mic* BLLLLEEEEEEEEEEGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you can find your own pathway to happiness and all that good shit!
MFKNZINE 