But amidst the re-releases of high-profile films like The English Patient<\/em> and Shakespeare in Love<\/em>, Paramount is also bringing back some low-low-budget pictures from Dimension Films, Miramax\u2019s genre-film wing. One film that\u2019ll definitely make all the brothas and sistas with Blu-ray players happy is Paid in Full<\/em>, the inner-city gangsta film from 2002, which is out this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I distinctly remember it quietly slipping into theaters back in October of that year. (I actually reviewed<\/a> it for an alt-weekly in Philadelphia.) Paid<\/em> seemed like a textbook \u2018hood crime drama: the poster had all three main characters, with images of bling, guns, cash and ladies smattered around them. And what\u2019s the tagline? \u201cThe American dream\u2026 Their way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, the film has all of that, but it\u2019s actually handled in a more nuanced manner. Paid<\/em> is a loosely-based account of the epic reign drug dealers Azie \u201cAZ\u201d Faison (who produced the film along with Jay-Z and Brett Ratner, and co-wrote an earlier draft of the screenplay), Rich Porter, and Alpo Martinez had on the streets of Harlem in the \u201880s. The stand-ins for this film are Ace (Wood Harris, best known as drug capo Avon Barksdale from The Wire<\/em>), Mitch (Mekhi Phifer) and Rico (rapper Cam\u2019ron). Paid<\/em> plays more like a hip-hop Goodfellas<\/em>, with Ace narrating the story of how he and his two partners rose and fell in the crime world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even though Paid<\/em> looks like a hardcore \u2018hood drama with a heavy, hip-hop soundtrack (it is<\/em> named after an Eric B. & Rakim album, after all), it\u2019s also a complex character study. Screenwriters Matthew Cirulnick (whose pulpy CV includes co-writing the Earp: Saints for Sinners<\/em> comic books) and Thulani Davis (who wrote and edited for the Village Voice<\/em> for over a decade) were going for more than bling and bloodshed. They wanted you to get to know these guys and why they chose the gangsta life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paid<\/em> is also the directorial debut of Charles Stone III, a filmmaker who originally directed those \u201cWhassup!\u201d commercials for Budweiser.<\/a> For his first film, Stone got together with longtime Atom Egoyan cinematographer Paul Sarossy and made a \u2018hood film that\u2019s more quiet and intimate than flashy and boisterous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Shot on a $3 million budget, Paid<\/em> feels like the work of someone who wanted you to pay more attention to what\u2019s going on with the characters than their surroundings. Stone shows how the low-profile Ace tried to create a drug operation where everybody eats. But he soon learns that no matter how much he tries to keep things on the up-and-up, he\u2019s always gonna deal with savage brothas who wanna stick him for his paper. \u201cThis life, this game \u2014 there ain\u2019t no love in it,\u201d he says, after a brush with death has him contemplating leaving the game. \u201cIt don\u2019t love you back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for his suave buddy Mitch, trapping isn\u2019t just a job \u2014 it\u2019s something that unfortunately makes him a pillar in the community. Phifer does some charismatic, sympathetic work playing a druglord who\u2019s in it for both the hustle and<\/em> the admiration. It\u2019s a ride that reaches a bleak, bloody conclusion, which includes a tearful monologue from Phifer (written by him too<\/a>) that has been oft<\/a> recreated<\/a> by YouTubers<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No one can ever say that Paid<\/em> is another one of those \u2018hood movies that glamorizes the drug-dealing lifestyle. (The movie actually ends with Ace watching a hip-hop video being made, as rappers pretend to live the treacherous thug life he and his boys lived.) This may explain why the movie had the fanfare-less theatrical release it received so many years ago. I can just imagine Bob and Harvey expecting Stone to give them their own New Jack City<\/em>, and they end up with an all-Black version of those cautionary gangster tales studios used to make back in the \u201830s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I interviewed Stone in 2006, and he explained why Paid in Full <\/em>was basically dumped into theaters. \u201cHollywood studios or film studios tend to design films that will cater to a specific demographic,\u201d he told me. \u201cA lot of times, movies will \u2014 as much as studios say, \u2018Well, we wanna tell interesting stories and be creative and provocative\u2019 a lot of times, the stories have to sit in a box. It has to sit in an aesthetic box that guarantees they\u2019re gonna make their money back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But since this is a movie made by Black people about Black people starring Black people, Black people obviously embraced it. (When he was writing for the New York Times<\/em>, African-American film critic Elvis Mitchell put it on his ten-best list of 2002.<\/a>) Of course, Stone \u2014 who would release his second film, the college marching band drama Drumline<\/em>, two months later over at Fox \u2014 has enjoyed how Paid<\/em> has become a film that people continue to discover and appreciate. \u201cIt came and went,\u201d he told me back in \u201806, \u201cbut it seemed to resonate with folks, which was nice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also nice to know that, even though Paramount is bringing back the prestige classics from Miramax\u2019s heyday, they\u2019re also throwing in underappreciated, down-and-dirty flicks like Paid in Full<\/em>. “Paid in Full” is out now on Blu-ray<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/paid2-1024x576.jpg\")
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