Gridlock’d

With Tim Roth, Tupac Shakur, Thandiwe Newton 
Written and Directed by Vondie Curtis Hall
(Polygram/Interscope/Def/Webster/Dragon)
by Scott Hefflon

Gridlock’d is a solid 90 minutes of struggling to clean up your act. Imagine the hopelessness of Kids melding with the amusing (without necessarily resorting to slapstick) anecdotes of The Breakfast Club, though perhaps Clerks might offer a less glitzy alternative. Stretch and Spoon (Tim Roth and Tupac Shakur) get a reality slap when their best friend/lead singer/benefactor Cookie (Thandie Newton) O.D.s. As the cheerful countdown to New Year’s Eve commences, Stretch and Spoon bring Cookie to the hospital – or at least they try to. Cabs pass them by, 911 puts them on hold, and finally, after dragging her in themselves, they have their first run-in with counter “help” who ask for forms to be filled out, insurance and Medicaid numbers, the whole nine yards of red tape. After the first of many screaming matches, a kindly young doctor (Richmond Arquette) offers his sympathy and help. Watching his lovely friend breathe peacefully in her coma, Spoon decides to kick his habit and get into a detox program. After one last hit, for old time’s sake.

To fund their final cookout, they wrap a brick in a box and sell it to some dude in a fancy car. Unfortunately, it’s Superfly, license plate “D-REPER,” and he’s a bad motherfucker. Over a pleasant smack luncheon at their friendly neighborhood dealer’s, it’s established that Stretch is a crazy white guy who thinks he’s black, will mouth off to anyone,and ain’t afraid of shit. Spoon straightens him out saying, “You gotta chill with that `nigger’ shit, man. I let you carpool with me, but you can’t be callin’ me nigger in front of other Black people.” At least I think that’s what he said. On the way out, they again meet D-REPER, and his big, bald henchman with the shiny gun lets them now that The Man is dissatisfied with his purchase. Then he shoots at them.

Part of Gridlock’d‘s charm is the violent flashbacks, exploding negative snapshot to live action, which fill in the story during those numerous times spent waiting for their numbers to be called. As in real life, that’s when the memories flood in, during the inaction, during the long waits to the next scene, that’s when the storyline is placed in perspective. Another theme is the closeness these three friends share. The New Year’s Eve flashback showing the band crammed in a bathroom stall sharing a joint and taking leaks without shame or embarrassment really strikes a nerve.

Various scenes of Roth ranting against the system are, of course, dead-on, funny, and stitch together scene after scene of the desperate (and now accused of the murder of their dealer) duo trying like hell to get a break, a bit of compassion out of a hardened world, or just a way to get off the streets. By now, they’re chain-smoking, twitchingly hostile, and running low on patience. And, of course, social service staffers are so forgiving and accommodating to such moods. One great scene shows a fellow maze runner, a blind vet named James W. Stewart (Howard Hesseman) and his dog Nixon losing it and going on a rampage, terrorizing the lobby as the cops are busting our junkie heroes in the bathroom. This we discover as Spoon and Stretch watch the evening news – just another day’s account of the horror and tragedy occurring on our streets, back in the waiting area of the emergency room. Only this time, they’re badly wounded. In order to escape the bad guys, the cops, and their addictions, they resort to drastic means for drastic needs. Stretch has been shot, so in order to go with him, Spoon asks him to stab him a few times with a pen knife in a scene even more hilarious than the one in Scream (is this Stab-Yourself Summer? My calendar failed to alert me). The closing scene shows Cookie coming out of the coma, calling home and saying that with this big break (a recording contract) perhaps they outta clean up, all while our protagonists slowly bleed on the hospital floor mere feet away. Just as the movie opens with the attention-getting “I’m thinking about getting a penis implant,” it fades out to Spoon and Stretch in the final stretch, about to get the help they need – the loud tic toc, tic toc, tic toc marking the passage of time.

The credits roll to a standing ovation performance by the now-sober band in which Tupac does a little “Life in a traffic jam” rap – the soundtrack is available on “untouchable” Death Row Records. The music, incidentally, was provided by Stewart Copeland. In closing, I’d like to agree with Rolling Stone, which called this “Shakur’s best performance.” Then again, I was one of the dozen or so unfortunates who rented Mickey Rourke’s Bullet on dollar night, and topping that turd is about as tough as flushing the toilet.