MOVIE REVIEW
IF you haven’t heard “bitch” or the n-word enough recently, then “Thicker Than Water” might be the movie for you.
Both words are featured in virtually every sentence of dialogue – often several times in the same sentence – througout this generic, cliche-ridden gangsta-rap movie starring hip-hop artists Mack 10, Fat Joe and Ice Cube.
The only thing that makes “Thicker Than Water” remarkable is that it’s an action flick whose pistol-toting, fist-hurling heroes all verge on the obese. Apart from that, the film is standard or below-standard gangstas-in-the-hood stuff: absurd machismo, lots of gunplay and an amoral attitude to drug dealing.
DJ (Mack 10) is the leader of an L.A. gang who lives with his respectable middle-class mother and stepfather and is working on a rap career. He has two girlfriends, studious Brandy (Kidada Jones) and violent Leyla (Tom’ya Bowden). The film opens with Leyla beating and then shooting a female rival.
Walking home from a visit to Brandy, DJ is set upon by members of another gang. The thugs are about to kill DJ when their leader Alonzo (Fat Joe) comes out of the house and orders them to spare his life.
On a subsequent evening, the two gangs confront each other at a recording studio. DJ’s homeboys are more numerous and better-armed, but DJ recognizes Alonzo as the man who saved his life, and a shootout is averted. When the two “top dogs” bump into each other at a low-rider show a few days later, they talk for the first time.
It turns out that both are interested in making rap music, but DJ’s equipment has been destroyed in a fire, and the all-girl act Alonzo was producing has been seduced away by an unscrupulous record company. They resolve to work together as musicians.
In order to jump-start a record company, DJ and Alonzo go into the drug-dealing business, connecting with drug lord Gator (C.J. Mac). The bulk of the movie deals with this fund-raising, including an attempted rip-off by one of Gator’s lieutenants and a police raid.
DJ and Alonzo are making a final deal in New York when a war breaks out between their respective gangs in L.A.
This problem – and a couple of others – are resolved by a perfunctory twist of fate. This is not a film that puts much effort into establishing its characters’ motivations or structuring a plot. The screenplay was reportedly written in 2 weeks, and it shows.
It’s a shame that the writing is so weak because neither Mack 10 nor Fat Joe gives a bad performance. It’s possible that given decent material one or both of them might have the same acting chops as Ice Cube (whose role as an arms supplier is only a small one).