Gang Tapes (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio Commentary-Filmmakers Featurette-Home Invasion Robbery Featurette-Unedited Freestyle Rap Music Video-What You Got Featurette-Making Of Deleted Scenes Theatrical Trailer-3
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	80:18
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Adam Ripp
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Trivell Darontay McClendon Darris Love Don Cambell Six Reasons Sonja Marie Aura Ruiz Tasheia Woodward Andrew Stoddard Michelle Marie White Rochelle Kevin Wiseman Dwayne Whitehead
Case	?
RPI	$24.95	Music	Coolio Kurupt Chino XL

    Gang Tapes makes use of a tried and tested plot device (the home video footage), but with a novel setting. Instead of the spooky woods (The Blair Witch Project) this little slice of faux-verite takes place in the scary hoods. Set against a backdrop of the gang banging Bloods and Crips in South Central LA, this pseudo-documentary charts a short period in the life of aspiring gangsta Kris (Trivell).

    The film opens with a family of tourists travelling through the typical hot-spots of Los Angeles - the Hollywood sign, Mann's Chinese Theatre and the like - as shown on their digital video camera footage. Suddenly their holiday mood is shattered when they are subjected to a violent car-jacking. The car, along with the family camera and luggage has fallen into the hands of the Eastside Red Riderz - a street gang.

    The camcorder becomes the permanent companion of fourteen year old Kris as he hangs out with his older friends and becomes exposed to all the joys of gang life. Violent beatings, rape, interminable swearing, manufacturing crack cocaine and the inevitable drive-by shootings are all caught on tape by Kris. This is one of the biggest weaknesses of this film - it is simply nonsensical that someone would be allowed to film all of the criminal activities that Kris comes across. The camcorder device ends up - as in The Blair Witch Project before it - feeling contrived.

    I have never been to the South Central neighbourhoods, but there is virtually nothing revelatory about this film. I could have written this piece of work - basically take a heap of short scenes involving drugs, sex, violence, swearing and rap then mix them up in random combinations and play back. The cast is made up of unknown actors - many of them former gang members - and they acquit themselves adequately at best. The fights all look staged, the various wounds look unconvincing, and the delivery of many lines is painfully wooden. To make matters worse, the situations they are asked to act through are uniformly derivative and predictable. Guess what? Poor black people sometimes form gangs. Guess what? They sometimes deal drugs. Guess what? The gangs sometimes kill each other's members. Yawn. Perhaps the only surprising thing about this movie is that the writer/director/producer (Adam Ripp) is a white, middle-class, Jewish American.

    Look, for an independent first feature Gang Tapes deserves some commendation. As a movie which was shot in only twelve days it deserves a grudging tip of the hat. Unfortunately, as a DVD release it will have limited appeal - it teaches you nothing you could not have guessed about gang life. Maybe, having reviewed Biggie and Tupac, State Property and Boyz N The Hood, I have overdosed on this genre. Nevertheless, I can only recommend this as a rental for serious fans of the urban gangsta scene. There is nothing wrong with this film per-se - to be fair it may be one of the most realistic of its genre - but it simply left me feeling "Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt... next!"

Video

    The overall video transfer is pretty good for a film which is shot on a handheld camcorder.

    The movie is presented in a full screen aspect ratio of 1.33:1 which, given that it was shot on a personal DV camera, would surely be the original aspect ratio.

    The image is free from any significant (video) grain during brightly lit scenes. The limitations of the digital camcorder become much more evident during low light scenes, where sharpness falls foul of pixelization and appreciable low level noise. Much of the time it is surprisingly sharp, but due to the handheld nature of the camerawork, inevitably focus is lost on many occasions as the whiplash pans and crash edits take their toll.

    Black levels are fine during brighter scenes but as soon as the light drops off, the limited shadow detail becomes apparent and low level noise crops up. The contrast of some shots is also affected by the auto white balance on the camera, so bleached out backgrounds are commonplace - particularly when shooting from inside a car. The colour rendition is often limited by the inadequate (although realistic) lighting. Nevertheless, there are occasions (for instance a funeral scene) where some really vivid colours do crop up. There is no sign of colour bleeding evident. Skin tones look natural.

    I noticed no issues with MPEG compression artefacts. There is some evidence of aliasing throughout the film, but never enough to be really annoying. I found no distracting instances of edge enhancement. There is no problem with telecine wobble.

    There are no significant film (video) artefacts in what is a very clean transfer.

    There are, sadly as they would have come in handy, no subtitles on offer.

    The disc is in a single sided and dual layered (DVD 9) format, but I could detect no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio transfer is alright technically, but hardly reference quality.

    The sole audio track is a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix encoded at 224 kbps. The surround flag is not enabled. There are no major defects in the way of hiss, pops or dropouts.

    The dialogue is sometimes mixed a little low relative to the gangsta raps, which can make it hard to make out on occasion. What makes it even harder to understand is the fact that many of the cast speak so quickly, and with most of the dialogue composed of jive-talking slang and endless expletives, I found twenty per-cent of the dialogue close to unintelligible. The large amounts of shouting and frequent screaming destroy another twenty per-cent. Audio sync is fine.

    Original music is attributed to Coolio, Kurupt and Chino XL. It sounds pretty much like the soundtrack to every other movie of this genre - although I must admit to quite liking the Chino XL track (What You Got). If you like the whole gangsta rap vibe then you may dig this. Otherwise, there is nothing here to convert new fans.

    Unsurprisingly, given the digital camcorder source of audio, the front speakers do all the work. There is some mild stereo spread across the front soundstage but nothing more. The surround speakers, even with Pro Logic II enabled, have little substantial to do. They see some non-specific activity that adds little to the documentary feel of the film.

    Depending on your speaker set-up, you may get some redirected bass through your subwoofer. The bass beat from the gangsta-rap music is the most likely to put in an appearance. There is nothing in the way of true LFE present.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are quite a few extra features available for such a low budget flick.

Menu

    The main menu is a few short loops of camcorder footage accompanied by a loop of the Chino XL track. It offers the options of playing the film, selecting one of sixteen chapter stops, or viewing the following extra features:

Commentary

    Writer/director/producer Adam Ripp is joined by co-producer Steven Wolfson and producer David Goodman. They provide a dry but mildly interesting commentary which explores the making of the film in all the expected ways.

Home Invasion Robbery

    Running for 1:59 this appears to be an unaltered version of one of the scenes from the film.

Unedited Freestyle Rap

    Running for 7:33 this is a lengthy unedited version of one of the raps from the film.

What You Got music video

    Running for 4:29 this is the music video for Chino XL's catchy tune.

Making of Gang Tapes

    Running for 36:43 this is a solid and interesting documentary, including screen tests and quite a bit of detail behind the unusual political and physical dangers of making a film about gangs in a real gang neighbourhood. More interesting than the film itself and presented at 1.33:1 with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack encoded at 224 kbps.

Deleted Scenes

    Running for 4:30 this is a brief collection of deleted scenes which play in sequence.

Theatrical Trailers

    Two versions are on offer, one running for 1:21 which includes the carjacking scene and one running for 1:14 without. Interestingly they are presented letterboxed at 1.78:1 with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack encoded at 224 kbps.

Home Video Trailer

    Running for 0:49 and presented at 1.33:1 with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack encoded at 224 kbps.

    The Region 1 release of this movie seems to be substantially the same as our own on all major fronts. It may have some additional music videos as part of its extra features, and the value of these may be enough to make a Region 1 purchase preferable for fans.

    Yawn. Gang Tapes is a gritty, unflinching look inside the street gangs of Los Angeles. All captured on a stolen camcorder. Is it just me, or have I had a gritty peek inside the gritty street gangs of unflinching LA just a few too many gritty times for a middle-class white man who lives unflinchingly in Melbourne? Adequate video and stereo audio with a looter's knapsack full of extras cannot make me enthuse over this entirely predictable piece of white middle-class filmmaker fluff. Sure, it may be gritty fluff, but it's still unflinchingly fluff. Been there, seen that, read the book, got the T-shirt...and the beanie. One for avid gang-banger film fans only.

    The reasonable video transfer is typical of a decent digital camcorder.

    The Dolby Digital 2.0 audio transfer is adequate.

    Extras, including a commentary and a documentary, are very good for a low budget flick.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall