Fresh

"We read everyday about kids caught in the cross fire," says Samuel L. Jackson. "There are kids out there, 12 or 13 years old, making life and death decisions that they shouldn't have to make."

Jackson, an actor whose career has run the gamut from Jurassic Park to the upcoming Pulp Fiction, has acquired a hard-edged screen persona through his vivid portrayal of angry black men. In the new film Fresh, he tackles the difficult combination of repressed bitterness and equally repressed affection.

"To me, the great thing about Fresh is that this kid seeks out his father," explains Jackson. "But (the father's) not a very demonstrative guy, and he doesn't know how to reach out to his son. Instead, he passively reinforces the kid's own anger by teaching him speed chess."

Fresh is a determinedly off-beat movie that plays like a cross between Menace II Society and Searching for Bobby Fischer. The title is the street name of the movie's lead character, a 12-year-old kid (Sean Nelson) whose quiet, almost soulful exterior masks an interior of sensitivity, intelligence and rage. Fresh is trapped within the mean streets of Brooklyn, but he desires an imaginary world of sunlight and family togetherness. The reluctant employee of several drug lords, Fresh becomes convinced that his only means of escape from the streets is via a series of Machiavellian power plays that pit various gang members against each other.

"Through the speed chess games," says Jackson, "the father inadvertently teaches the kid aggression and strategy, but he doesn't pass on any positive ways to use them."

On the surface, Fresh may appear to be just another fast-buck turn on urban pathology and the modern gangster genre. But it goes much deeper than that. Its visuals are haunting, almost dreamlike, and it's more concerned with emotions than gunfire.

It was this depth of feeling and story that attracted Jackson and fellow actor Giancarlo Esposito to Fresh. "I'm offered drug dealer parts all the time," Esposito points out. "Normally, I don't want to do those kinds of roles. That's why I only appear in one or two films a year."

Esposito has had major roles in such films as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, as well as the lead in the critically acclaimed (though short lived) TV series Bakersfield PD. He looks like a matinee idol — a crucial element of his performance in Fresh, in which he plays a drug lord who's both vile and perversely understandable.

"Today, movies are all about the evil part," continues Esposito. "Hollywood has created an, atmosphere where people are titillated by violence. It gives them a sense of power, but it doesn't give them any regard for human life. They don't know what death is."

The reality of death is presented in Fresh in a single, shocking gesture in a school yard shoot-out scene. The young girl who Fresh is attracted to is accidentally shot in the neck, and her last seconds of life are visually clocked by the spastic, but gradually slowing, kicks of her feet. The image's focus is small, but its impact is overwhelming, and it clearly places the movie's emphasis on the consequence of violence rather than the thrill of action.

Fresh is a radical departure from the typical 'hood movies that centers on a nightmarish rite of passage during which innocence is betrayed and lost. Ironically, this poetic black thriller is the debut feature film of a young white filmmaker whose previous credit was the screenplay for the Clint Eastwood bomb The Rookie.

"It's not about being either black or white," argues Boaz Yakin, a twenty-something drop-out from both film school and Hollywood. "It's about being an artist. Artists should be able to express themselves anyway that they want, about any subject they want. When you get down to it, people are very similar."

A few years ago, Yakin was on the fast track escalator in LaLa Land, but quickly discovered that he only wanted off. "I was working on a lot of stupid Hollywood action films. I lost my feeling for the work and began hating myself."

Yakin fled to Paris and started writing novels. But his time in the shoot-'em-up mills of the dream factory had left him with a nagging question: "Who is the most powerless type of hero possible?" A question that, in turn, kept bringing him back to an offbeat story idea about a child.

"Then a friend of mine, Lawrence Bender, called me," recalls Yakin. "He has just finished producing Pulp Fiction, and he told me that he could get the money to make any movie I wanted to do."

Yakin doesn't make any pretense of being street-wise or especially knowledgeable about African American life. He did extensive research and was very dependent on the movie's cast for advice. "I'm not trying to pretend that this movie is real," he admits. "It's a reflection of various things, of my feelings about these things."

Indeed, it's at the emotional level where Fresh most definitely succeeds.

When a Man Loves a Woman

There are a few good things to be said about When a Man Loves a Woman. Now that the movie is released, we don't have to watch the lousy preview trailer anymore (it's been playing since last September). It's also nice to see Andy Garcia play something other than a street-wise ethnic type. Instead, he gets to play a upper-middle-class anal retentive type.

But good performances by Garcia and Meg Ryan are When a Man Loves a Woman's only real merits. This rehab drama about an alcoholic mother lacks the hard grittiness of The Lost Weekend and the emotional resonance of The Days of Wine and Roses. You don't even see much drinking, despite the fact that Ryan's supposed to be on a protracted binge. She simply shows up drunk. It must be magic.

Which is indicative of what's wrong with this movie. It refuses to delve into any of the reasons why Ryan drinks, or why Garcia's such a model of co-dependency. It also refuses to unload on Garcia's character, even though he plays a husband who's clearly a controlling jerk. Everything in When a Man Loves a Woman is cookie-cutter clean – which does a disservice to families that are dealing with the hard realities of alcoholism and recovery. But mostly, it's just a drag.

Naked

The decay of England’s economy and social structure in the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s slash ‘n’ burn administration has become a virtual obsession with British filmmakers. Peter Greenaway took the raw appetite of the nouveau riche to its logical conclusion in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Ken Loach’s Riff Raff offered a working class that was so thoroughly disenfranchised that petty theft and arson had become the common bloke’s most rational alternative to unemployment.

Violent alienation and complete social breakdown are the order of the day, and in Mike Leigh’s bitter new satire, Naked, the day grinds into a cold night of spiritual annihilation. Leigh is best known for such comedies as High Hopes and Life Is Sweet, rough-hewn works of improvised humor that presented a fresh and naturalistic view of lower-class English life. But Naked is closer to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange – except that the latter’s nightmare fantasy has become Naked’s harsh reality. Naked has the crazy, but matter-of-fact, feel of just another day in the apocalypse.

Much of Naked is devoted to the wanderings of Johnny (David Thewlis), a highly unemployable young man who comes across as half-devil and half-prophet. He may also be thoroughly insane. Johnny’s intensely angry at society, and he directs that anger at any woman near him, while carrying on in a nonstop ramble that’s a hellish brew of philosophical posturing, biblical posing and crude sexual brutality.

A bungled date-rape sends Johnny running from the law, in a stolen car, from Manchester to London, where he plans to sponge off of his ex-girlfriend, Louise (Lesley Sharp), for a while. Louise is convenient, but it’s Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge), Louise’s druggie roommate, who Johnny finds most interesting. She offers the tantalizing combination of sex and a fresh audience for his continual harangues.

But just as Johnny seems in the process of scoring a new conquest, competition arrives in the form of Jeremy/Sebastian (Greg Cruttwell), a demonic figure who’s perfectly at home in the crumbling modern order. While Johnny cruises the streets in search of the anti-Christ (whose coming is foretold in supermarket pricing bar-codes), Jeremy/Sebastian is busy with ruthless business deals and even more ruthless bouts of S&M.

Naked is harsh, brutal and vicious. It’s also a frighteningly accurate view of the pure chaos of the post-industrial wasteland that’s engulfing the modern world. Naked is an honestly disturbing film whose soul burns with rage while its face wears an icy, sarcastic sneer.