Gridlock'd

Red tape can sure make things impossible. Everyone has had one of those days that nothing goes right and the bureaucracy around you makes it so impossible to make a move in the right direction that you want to throw your hands up in the air. Stretch (Tim Roth) and Spoon (Tupac Shakur) are no exception. Having decided to kick their addiction, after being duly impressed one New Year's Eve their girlfriend Cookie's (Thandie Newton) O.D., they knock on every door only to discover no one's home. The offices are manned, but the machine doesn't operate in assisting those in dire need because it's too busy co-ordinating its help programs with dysfunctional patterns. They are constantly faced with the rising problem that if you can't get a fix on a new life, you might as well get a fix in an old one. Of course, matters get even more complicated when you're carrying around a bag of dope that you found on a corpse and the dealers want it back. The cops, on top of that, have mistaken you for the killers and want to throw your asses in jail. Who needs all this grief when you've just decided to turn over a new leaf?

Let's face it, bureaucray's enough to drive you to drugs.

A decent job is done by first time director/writer Vondie Curtis Hall in this black guy, white guy buddy drama set in the drug milieu of Detroit. The humor helps to make it feel real, but it falls short of the raw edge found in similar films. Roth and Shakur make a good team, but, as we unfortuately all know, will not be seen together again.