# Hurricane Streets (1998)

### reviewed by
Steve Rhodes

                               HURRICANE STREETS
                         A film review by Steve Rhodes
                          Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes

    RATING (0 TO ****):  **

HURRICANE STREETS tells the story of an amoral group of young New York City teenagers, who live lives of varying degrees of criminality. Some draw the line at shoplifting, some at grand theft, others at guns, and others at much worse crimes.

Written and directed by the accomplished actor Morgan Freeman, the film won numerous awards at last year's Sundance Film Festival. With the tone and pacing of a slow, coming-of-age story set in the Midwest, the movie, set instead in an inner city, apparently wants the audience to be sympathetic to the kids. The multiracial cast looks like a carefully chosen cross section of society. And although the kids live in relatively poor environments, they act more like middle-class teens.

Riding little bikes like the ones from ET, the kids go from the crime scenes to their club house where they keep their loot, to the elementary school grounds where whey take orders, including sizes, for yet-to-be purloined goods. Except that they idle away their days with various misdemeanors, the kids act like older versions of Spanky and Our Gang.

Marcus, played with despair by Brendan Sexton III, is the leader of the gang. Marcus is constantly challenged by fellow member Chip (David Roland Frank), who thinks he is invulnerable -- "I'll never get caught, man." Chip prides himself on being the local rebel. He gets a tattoo of the finger on his arm, dies his hair a strange color, and gets a nose ring. He also has friends who want to push the gang way beyond their petty larceny.

Marcus meets a sweet girl of 14 named Melena, played sweetly by Isidra Vega, whom he invites to his fifteenth birthday party. Her abusive father -- you can guess that he will be bad because he wears a prominent gold cross -- keeps Melena on a tight leash and will not let her go to the party or anywhere at night.

The script tries to pull at your heart strings at every turn. We find that Marcus loves his mother, but she's in prison. The exact nature of her crime is another reason for his melancholy.

The kids view stealing goods from shoes to candy bars with the same casualness that others might look upon collecting seashells. The story provides ample hints that its really not their fault. They've been brought up to act this way and don't know any better. What, for example, does one of the adults give Marcus for his birthday? A can of spray paint so he can deface the local buildings.

When the cops arrest Marcus for taking orders for stolen goods from ten-year-olds, he doesn't understand why the police are bothering him. "I might have sold a thing or two -- it's not like killing people or selling drugs," he argues with the officers.

After meandering for over an hour in a landscape of hopelessness, out of the blue the show takes an unrealistic but dramatic twist. The abrupt ending is equally surprising. People left the theater at my screening kind of numb and disinterested. One hopes that in the future Freeman will stick to acting, where his talent has few equals.

HURRICANE STREETS runs just 1:28. It is rated R for violence and profanity and would be fine for older teenagers.

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