A film like Superfly has to walk a very fine line. Play it too straight and what's the point; go too far over the top and it just gets silly. So while it's easy to dismiss it for not working - and most of the time it doesn't really work - films like this almost never click. Good pulp crime dramas are few and far between, and even the good ones usually get dismissed as trash. Having this one make it to cinemas at all is some kind of victory.
It's a tale as old as time: the biggest drug dealer in town (Atlanta) decides to get out of the game, and the only way he can do that is by pulling off one last big score. Problem is, this film never actually gets around to explaining what that one last big score is: Youngblood Priest (Trevor Jackson) pulls off a whole bunch of smooth moves with hustler skill (his superpower is that he has information on everyone), but his big plan seems to be "sell even more drugs than usual" while his partner Eddie (Jason Mitchell) urges him to solve his problems in the usual lead-heavy manner.
Taking things up a notch is a risky move, because he's been able to build up his business while everyone in town's been distracted by not-really-rival drug gang the Snow Patrol, who all dress only in white right down to their guns: these guys are both brilliant and hilarious, and the film could have used a dozen more ideas as great as this one. But when a Snow Patrol member sets his eye on one of Priest's girls - he's got two, one African-American (Lex Scott Davis) and one Latina (Andrea Londo) - it ends in a street shooting (Priest literally dodges the bullet) and he realises it's no point being smart if everyone around you is an idiot.
What follows is slightly better than functional, as Priest ends up constantly dancing between various forces out to bring him down, including the Snow Patrol, his former mentor Scatter (Michael Kenneth Williams), the Mexican Cartel, and a pair of murderous corrupt cops (Jennifer Morrison as the brains of the outfit is clearly enjoying being bad to the bone). There are car chases (which end up trashing a Confederate monument), multiple bloody shootouts, a three-way sex scene in a shower and a drug selling montage set to Curtis Mayfield's "Pusher Man"; so far so good.
No-one cares if a plot is stock standard so long as there's something original going on, but this never comes to life. Director X somehow manages to make Atlanta look even more generic than it did in Baby Driver, and even the over-the-top moments of crazy excess - Snow Patrol are based out of a mansion bigger than Buckingham Palace - feel like the kind of thing you could find in any C-list cop drama. The action is functional at best, the performances are good but not great, and Priest's hair is often the most interesting thing on screen.
Occasionally there's a sharp line of dialogue that lifts proceedings - an early diss towards Priest's skinny jeans is a solid laugh, and Scatter almost single-handledly brings the film back to life when he starts on about Priest's "Morris Day-looking hair" - but there's nothing here you can't get better elsewhere. And a drug dealer like Priest knows that's no way to run a successful business.
- Anthony Morris
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