Jahi Di'Allo Winston

Meek Mill

Teyonah Parris

William Catlett

Kezii Curtis

Donielle T. Hansley Jr.

Milan Ray

Chandler DuPont

Hero Hunter

Robert Dobson

Pacino Braxton

Lakeyria Doughty

Jeanette Maus

Cecelia Ann Birt

Arnold Y. Kim

Kate Pak

Marvin Raheem

David Andrew MacDonald

Darren Alford

Nathan Corbett

Talia Williams

LaTonya Blue

Timeka Brown

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Gina Jun

Obada Adnan

Tre'a Bertrille

Wenston Black

Rick Kelvin Branch

Damien R. Campbell

Stephanie Cookie Carson

Charles D. Clark

Keith Crosby

Eileen Davis

C'yana Denby

LaDana Drigo

Victor Ellis

Richard Ricky D Evans

Melanie Howard

Adam Huff

Dominic Jackson

Wain Jenkins

Makayla Jones

Eric Lamont

Angela R. Liles

Tiana Melvina Woods

Antoinette Montgomery

Stephanie Parker

Ramona Rideout

Rxchie

Mashawn Robertson

Marcellus ''Bassman'' Shepard

Memo Sanchez

Lotfy Nathan

Frédéric Dubois

Joseph Fraioli

Tiffany Zappulla

Christine Foley

Sandra Linn Koepper

Joel Dougherty

Ángel Manuel Soto

Clarence Hammond

Caleeb Pinkett

Sherman Payne

James Lassiter

Mary Vernieu

Kairo Courts

Luis Carballar

Barry Jenkins

Marc Bienstock

Scott Dougan

Lindsay Graham Ahanonu

Jada Pinkett Smith

Will Smith

Katelin Arizmendi

Alex Somers

Chris Boyd

Kirk Sullivan

Peter Bucossi

Drama

Charm City Kings

Overbrook Entertainment

Warner Max

Sony Pictures

United States of America

Charm City Kings evokes such films as Boyz n’ the Hood, A Bronx Tale, and Torque. I know; one of those things isn’t like the others. The filmmakers, however, put the motorcycle fetish to good use, infusing it with imagery that’s almost religious in order to reveal its real-world impracticality.

Mouse (Jahi Di'Allo Winston) is a bright 14-year-old boy with a natural affinity for and encyclopedic knowledge of animals that make him a natural-born veterinarian — if he lives long enough to become one.

His late older brother Stro (Tyquan Ford), whom Mouse idolized, has become the patron saint of Mouse's adoration of bikes; whenever he speaks about them, Mouse is overwhelmed with a kind of ecstatic, frantic fervor.

Meanwhile, gangbanger Blax (Meek Mill) and detective Rivers (Will Catlett) butt heads over Mouse’s future. It’s worth noting that this conflict is not distilled into a black-and-white morality, and the two men strike an unexpected deal to ensure Mouse gets a second chance.

The film has been skillfully staged, photographed and edited (Katelin Arizmendi’s cinematography in particular provides us with a vivid experience of the Baltimore summer streets) — perhaps a little too much so; there’s a high speed chase that ironically seems to glorify exactly the sort of behavior that the movie as a whole condemns. Cutting this sequence would have solved another pressing issue: that of the excessive running time.

I’m splitting hairs, though; unlike most movies about motorized criminals (like Fast and Furious, to mention one other than Torque), Charm City Kings knows that actions have consequences; can't live life in the fast lane very long without crashing sooner or later.

The film is also aware that cycles must be broken for things to change. Mouse goes down the same path as his brother, never stopping to think that he could end up the same way; on the contrary, he is convinced that for some reason he is different, special — and he is, or rather, he could be, if he really wanted to.

I'm always complaining about kids acting like adults in movies for no other reason than that it's 'cute.' Here, though, Winston acts not like an adult but like a child doing his best to appear older than his age to fit in with the group he wants to be a part of.

Fittingly, his performance isn't resolute and steady but tentative and uncertain, and that's the perfect note for the character (Blax even warns him that a real man doesn't stutter or look down, failing to realize at the time that Mouse remains, despite his bravado, a kid who has no idea what he's getting himself into). This is a great performance from Winston as a kid who, on streets where children must often grow too fast for their own good, wants to be the first to cross the finish line.

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Charm City Kings

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