movie news : Waist Deep

"Waist Deep" plunges much deeper than that into good old-fashioned genre filmmaking.

Director Vondie Curtis Hall gives this virtually nonstop crime actioner, set against the mean streets of Los Angeles, pleasing noirish touches along with larger-than-life-size characters.

The Rogue Pictures release is pitched to urban houses, so blacks will predominately make up the audience for the well-made film.


Tyrese Gibson, after two fine performances in the John Singleton films "Baby Boy" and "Four Brothers," carries the movie on his broad shoulders, though the impossibly good-looking Meagan Good makes a solid action co-star.

The opening sequence in the screenplay by Hall and Darin Scott (from a story by Michael Mahern) is overly contrived, but does set off a classic race against the clock.

A newly paroled ex-con named O2 (Gibson) has somehow landed a security job that gives him access to a gun. When his flaky cousin Lucky (Larenz Tate) fails to pick up O2's son, Junior (H. Hunter Hall), from school, O2 must leave his job before a replacement shows up, taking the gun with him, to pick up the boy.

Then, tooling down Adams Boulevard, O2 has his car jacked by hoods with his boy still inside. This leads to a well-executed foot-and-car chase through traffic with guns going off and bad guys shot, but O2 ultimately loses the car -- and his beloved son.

His only connection to the carjackers is a hustler named Coco (Good), who apparently was assigned the job of distracting O2 before the assault. He forces Coco at gunpoint to join him in his crusade to get back his son.

By Kirk Honeycutt