Struggling against survival, August, a failed DJ, who after spending a night with a mysterious woman, finds out evidences for a murder, included a drug dealer, and a wealthy guy, the thing that inspires him to blackmail those men to have money.
Though the film gets more banal as it reaches its climax-most viewers will have seen it all before-Onah creates refreshing space around these familiar stories and themes.
A well-executed crime drama that, on a narrative level, finds itself too bogged down in the familiar to achieve genuine lift-off -- let alone anything memorable.
Onah - whose movie began life as his thesis project at New York University - seems more keen on showing how the tensions of immigration and gentrification have shaped the Lower East Side than on fashioning a credible thriller.
The film's visually arresting, but it's the performances that hold it all together - Short, Wilmer Valderrama, Jesse Spencer, Paz de la Huerta, Míriam Colón, and Mike Starr, with Bachleda being the real glue.
Ultimately, it's not so much the story - centered around a coke-fueled murder - that compels as Onah's familiarity with his setting. He's got a great feel for the vibrancy of downtown and the diversity of its population.
Onah doesn't quite stick the landing narratively, although he has such filmmaking energy that his work here merits comparison to that of the film's executive producer, Spike Lee.
