Cheap Belly (DVD) (DMX, Nas, Taral Hicks, Tionne 'T-Boz' Watkins, Method Man) (Hype Williams) Price

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Customer Reviews of Belly

Good for half, not good for all
A person can look a Belly two ways. Half of us will see it as a video guide on how to be drug dealin' gangsta, and as a bad influece on americas youth (trust me, I've seen this movie influence some kids). The other half will see it as a way for, to use one of Nas' own terms, "Ghetto Prisoners to Rise." My only beef is why did they show all of this crime and violence for 99% of the movie? It's like they just tacked on the "lets all get togther ednding" just to make you forget about the actual theme of the film. It doesn't make the film any worse, just puzzling. One great thing is how the characters that Nas, X, and Meth play are exactly how you would vision them in real life. X is hard and crazy, Nas is down, yet knowledgable and intellegant and Meth is grimy. If you like these artists, you'll love Belly. If you don't, you'll probably do better of watching somthing else.Belly is a movie with a message to and from the streets, and with an excellent story line, great camera angles, and real life situations. If oyu can get past all the excess "gangsta-ism" you wil see that.

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A respectable effort, nothing more, nothing less...
I have to say that Hype Williams' directorial film debut is pretty respectable. Some of the dialogue, especially on the females' parts, is extremely corny. I saw an MTV movie special on this when they were filming it, and T-Boz said that Hype let her write some of her own lines. He probably regrets having done that now, because her performance is embarrassingly bad. DMX turns in the strongest performance as the hard-edged self-destructive drug dealer Tommy, proving he is one of the most charismatic talents on the scene. Now if he would only hang up the microphone and start acting full-time, he'd be alright. From a technical standpoint, it's got great cinematography, especially in the opening sequence, a brilliantly-lighted and expertly-paced nightclub stick-up in which the entire gang steps out of their cars and enters the building all in slow motion with no sound at all, except for a classic Soul II Soul a capella. As for the rest of the cast like Nas and Taral Hicks, most of 'em don't have much by way of acting chops, and the characters aren't very interesting. However, this movie is still watchable. It has a gripping storyline and is a pretty original take on the urban crime drama. And the sountrack is blazing hot.

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This Is Pretty Good
Some acting's bad, but besides that "Belly" is an everyday crime film, only with alot of style and alot of truthfulness. DMX and Nas star as Tommy and Sincere(a modern day Butch and Sundance as Sincere puts it). They are thugs who rob night clubs. Then Tommy finds out about this new kind of drug, hooks up with his Jamaican druglord friend Lennox(one of the coolest performances), and builds an empire in Nebraska. Everything's cool until Knowledge(rapper Power) gets locked up and starts screwing Tommy's business up. He recruits Shameek(Method Man) to hunt them down and kill them. At the same time, Sincere starts to reconsider his lifestyle.

This isn't the greatest crime drama ever, but it is cool. DMX gives an outstanding performance. Nas' Sincere seemed a little dreamy at times, but his role still works. T-Boz outacts Nas because of the scene when Method Man breaks into her house and she freaks him out when she pulls a gun on him. Method Man gives an alright performance, but his role was too small. Taral Hicks plays Tommy's girl Kiesha, who in the end symbolizes woman power as she fights off Method Man.

As for the movie, there are alot of memorable scenes, the most being the opening nightclub robbery. Neon lights, glowing eyes, and quick getaways.

This is probably the biggest Hip-Hop cult movie. For these being debut actors and a debut movie director, this movie's amazing. The best is that most of the same things that we found wrong with this film, Hype(the director) found himself. It would've been better if it hadn't been edited so much(Hype says in the commentary that the movie was like 3 hours originally). The last stand of Lennox is a little like the last stand of Tony Montana in Scarface, but it is more realistic and stylish. Anyways, good performances, great directing, awesome cult classic.

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