Juice

Q, Bishop, Raheem and Steel are a gang of youngsters in Harlem. On the streets danger and seductive violence rules. Q, who is a disc jockey, dreams of a different life. What counts for the others is to achieve ''juice'' (respect) on the streets. Through his loyalty to the gang, Q is drawn into the ever escalating violence. An explosive and convincing street drama about growing up on the streets of America.

Comment:
It is of course not at all justified to speak of new black film as a genre. Spike Lee, John Singleton, Matty Rich and Mario van Peebles happen to be relatively young directors of Afro-American origin - but that is where the similarities end. For instance, what does Matty Rich's almost social documentary Straight Out of Brooklyn
have in common with Mario van Peebles' tiring New Jack City?
Ernest R. Dickerson has worked as photographer in all of Spike Lee's productions, from She's Gatta Have It to Malcolm X, and is considered to have contributed greatly to the highly stylistic quality in those films. But with his directing debut Juice, he proves that he is not planning on following in the footsteps of his former employer. Juice is a straight (compared to Spike Lee's films),
deliberately roughly filmed street thriller about four young men in Harlem. A few of the action scenes, especially the man to man showdowns in obscure places, actually bring Westerns to mind.
In addition, the sparse, not to say scraped off, dialogue (probably a consequence of the fact that many of the actors are ama· teurs} brings to mind white desert sand rather than black streets.
The reason Dickerson has been associa· ted with the above mentioned directors is the music. The soundtrack is produced by Hank Shocklee, the master producer who created the Public Enemy sound. Music is an integral part of the story in the film.
The main character Q, interpreted by Omar Epps, is a young, ambitious disc jockey who unintentionally gets involved in a robbery which leads to a killing. His friend Bishop, who soon becomes his enemy, is acted by Tupac Shakur; better known as the excellent rapper 2Pac, formerly a member of Digital Underground. None of them will go down in history as actors, but it is nevertheless in the disputes between these two men that the film comes off. Dickerson knows the Harlem streets like the back of his hand and the story line never feels predictable.
Jan Gradvall