Critic Reviews
36
Metascore
Generally Unfavorable
positive
3(15%)
mixed
6(30%)
negative
11(55%)
Showing 20 Critic Reviews
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All Reviews
Metascore
Metascore
75
This feature film debut by Williams is an ambitious, gritty and at times downright scary urban drama with a message of hope and redemption. [04 Nov 1998, p.44]
75
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]
70
It’s not the convoluted yet obvious plot of this 1998 drama about the domestic lives and criminal careers of two childhood friends (DMX and Nas) that draws you in—it’s the splendid visuals. Set mainly in New York City and Omaha, where these drug dealers do business according to their different ambitions, the movie is an image opera that deftly turns visual gimmicks into potent symbols.
60
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.
50
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.
50
Unfortunately, Belly is highly uneven. Williams comes from music videos and knows all about flashy techniques. His sure sense of the visual reveals potential, but he needs to learn to tell a story far more coherently. [04 Nov 1998, p.F2]
50
With style to spare, Hype Williams' gangsta rap epic Belly applies a wide range of MTV techniques slow motion, strobe effects, seemingly more fish-eye shots than there are fish in the sea to tell a confusing, fundamentally undramatic story about two holdup men from Queens (played by rappers DMX and Nas) who graduate to dealing a new kind of superpowered heroin. [06 Nov 1998, p.56]
42
Part incomprehensible GoodFellas rip-off and part feature-length music video, Belly is a millennial head film that subscribes to the sort of logic usually found only in acid trips, nightmares, and big-budget music videos.
40
Belly is a film that begs for a pat on the head for its virtue while catering to cinematic tastes more interested in crotch shots, topless dancers, wall-sized television screens, ganja galore and, wherever possible, crime without punishment, all to the accompaniment of a high-octane soundtrack.
38
This sickeningly violent film, starring a bevy of rap stars, marks the feature debut of hot video director Hype Williams, and while there are hints of his trademark trippiness, this is basically an utterly joyless endeavor. [04 Nov 1998, p.E6]
