Belly

Owing a debt to Scarface (the DePalma remake more than the Hawks original) and to the gangland opuses of Scorsese, Belly gets inside the gangsta culture with a wired authenticity. [04 Nov 1998, p.E04]

The medium overwhelms the message, but music video director Hype Williams' feature debut still has far more on its mind than it first lets on.

The film is never boring -- there's no question that filmmaker Hype Williams has the fancy moves -- but the rhythmic, stylistic repetition becomes tedious, and serves to keep the audience removed from the story.

Despite its admonitory tone, Belly spends so much time caressing images of material wealth, female exploitation, drugs and murder that one has to worry about its effect on youngsters. But with its uneven storytelling and acting glitches, Belly's dubious moral stance may be the easiest part of the film to stomach. [04 Nov 1998, p.2]

It is one thing to hit an audience over the head with a message, but Belly puts it in a big steel drum and drops it on you from a fourth-floor window. [04 Nov 1998, p.E3]

The bad acting — make that nonacting — of rappers DMX and Nas merges, all too well, with the shallow dehumanized vision of director Hype Williams.

The rap stars-turned-actors who populate this film exude a real presence, if not a wealth of acting chops. Williams' script is a real muddle, however, reinforcing the worst clichés about video directors who make the leap to feature filmmaking.