Hip-Hop Locos (2001)

Director: Lorenzo Munoz Jr.

Screenplay: Lorenzo Munoz Jr.

Cast: Unodoz as Unodoz; J10 as J10; Jose E. as the Carjack Victim; Phil Green as the Weed Dealer; Manuel Erives as Cocaine Dealer #2; Aubrey Flowers as the Studio Cocaine Dealer; J.J. Martinez as the Shotgun Gangster

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Two Hispanic wannabe hip hop superstars plan to acquire the funds and equipment to start their careers, even if it means killing a drug dealer and stealing his blow, and working their way from there; these two, Unodoz and J10 (playing versions of themselves at least in name) are going for a full home run on the same night to achieve their goal. Inherently Hip-Hop Locos is an interesting idea, and imagining a micro-budget tale set at one night, even with stolen shots of urban nightlife, on this premise is enticing, as this anti-hero duo drive across dank streets and freeways on a dangerous mission. Hell, for all that I will get to in a minute, the hip hop instrumental score is also honestly good music and the most rewarding part of the actual film as it plays over the images for me.

Unfortunately, Hip-Hop Locos is not a great film beyond said music but is instead a curiosity from the early 2000s era of no-budget digital filmmaking that many won't be able to sit through, just from how rough the film is in its look and for its bad content. Hip-Hop Locos can also have an alternative title "Padding: The Movie", which is the other crippling flaw at hand. For as simplistic a premise as it has, which doesn't need to be tampered with at all, it's broken by how the film instead drags on, not a slow art house minimalism but procrastinating indulgence to be able to make the film long enough to be a film. The kind where the most infamous scene, if you have ever heard of the film, is how long the strangulation of a drug dealer takes in a barely lit car; the idea of showing how murder is an agonising process in any other context would be interesting, but that wasn't clearly intentional just from the repeating of "Choke him!" over and over again in the soundtrack to the point of an aneurysm.

I haven't dared even mention that most of the film is barely lit, faces half hidden in the dark as this is all set at night, eyes not even visible on Unodoz and J10 due to this. To be honest, I could've lived with this if deliberate, like a low-fi version of Michael Mann's post-digital films, as it certainly adds to the mood. It does in this come off more as distracting aesthetic oddities especially as it feels hastily put together. The infra-red night footage does jar, and there's a prolonged scene of smoking week which leads to computer distortion effects anyone could've used on their PCs at the time, not an insult except for the fact this particular scene is distracting and lasts too long. Less pleasing too is the muffled sound, which doesn't have an atmosphere and is just a deterrent.

All of this however I could put up with; what kills the film even for a masochist for me is how bland everything is. The problem with a lot of genre cinema, regardless of budget, is when you want to make a film but your sense of dialogue is perfunctory and the ideas bland. Which is worse as this type of improvised low budget cinema works, an alternative world where a film like this with improvised banter and slang would've appealed to me, as are the scenes of our leads rapping the narrative so far to the camera. Instead, this is a film where the leads are so adamant to present themselves as cool that the machismo is just tedious. This more than the terrible technical craft is much more of an issue as, whilst the craft could be done deliberately and pose a potent effect, there is no real virtue in the attitude, the laboured attempt to clearly push one over as tough and cool to the point it becomes comical. Also this is weirdly fetishishtic, to the point you are going to see, if you track this film down for yourself, a scene where focused on one of their hands the pair of anti-heroes putting objects like a bag of blow and weapons in a bag than taking them out again and generally rearranging them, fingering the objects like this is meant to be objectified over as symbols for reasons difficult to decode.

This particularly sucks as the elephant in the room is that, even into the 2010s, one should ask if the representation of Hispanic Americans in American cinema is fully there, and also in lieu to the idea that whilst no film should not represent a whole group of people, Hip-Hop Locos dicking about like this is just going to be embarrassing for anyone. It comes off, speaking as someone who admits he's a white Englishman whose knowledge of rap is woefully malnourished, as absurd as is always an issue with some iconography of hip-hop, as bad as say the worst of heavy metal in the asinine toughness. Even if this was meant to be intentionally dark and nasty, which I could've gotten by on, it instead comes off in tone as boys playing adult gangsters in comparison to the intense nightmarish rush you could just get listening to Natural Born Killaz by Ice-T and Dr. Dre.

It's undeniably a slog to sit through, one most people would find unbearable to sit through, made worse as when the film's end credits include thank you wishes to family and children, a review this is harsh even for an obscure older film is still squashing a production by another human being. But it's not a good film unless subjectively you can put up with its various issues, and few probably would if I made an honest snap judgement. The result just comes off as a slight and mishandled obscurity that didn't succeed.

Abstract Rating: Moody

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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