Post Description

Verenigde Staten
Komedie / Misdaad
91 minuten

geregisseerd door Vondie Curtis-Hall
met Tim Roth, Tupac Shakur en Thandie Newton

Vlak voor het nieuwe jaar merken Strectch en Spoom dat hun vriendin in een coma is geraakt door een overdosis drugs. Met moeite brengen ze haar naar het ziekenhuis en besluiten om met drugs te stoppen. Ze komen in hun zoektocht voor hulp echter vast te zitten in een file van bureaucratie. Terwijl ze wachten gaan ze gewoon door met de drugs, maar hun leverancier wordt doodgeschoten en zij zijn de hoofdverdachten. Ze moeten dus snel van de straten of. Dus snel in een inrichting komen.

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Film info: 
Production

Gridlock'd marked the directorial debut of actor Vondie Curtis-Hall. He wrote the screenplay in 1993 and based it on actual life experience as a junkie during the 1970s in Detroit. Much like the characters in the film, Hall and a friend sought treatment for their addiction only to be told that it would take weeks to get admitted into rehab. The project was originally conceived of as Hall's final film school project. Polygram eventually agreed to finance it with a $5 million budget.

Hall wrote the character of Spoon with Laurence Fishburne in mind but could not afford him. He had considered Tupac Shakur for the role but thought he was too young and he had just gotten out of jail. Someone gave Shakur the script and after reading it said that he had to do it. Hall said that with this film, Shakur "wanted to prove that he was a good actor", and felt that he was "actually a lot like I was at the time the film was set. He wanted to sort himself out and was looking for some help".He sent actor Tim Roth the screenplay while he was making Rob Roy.  Roth was drawn to the project because of the humor in the screenplay as he remarked in an interview, "Normally, you'd work through a screenplay and say, 'We'll have to change that and that and somehow try to make it work,' but here the dialogue was always dead-on". Hall met Roth and convinced him to do the movie.
 

Reviews:
In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Shakur's performance: "He played this part with an appealing mix of presence, confidence and humor". Desson Howe, in his review for the Washington Post, wrote, "Shakur and Roth, who seem born for these roles, are allowed to take charge - and have fun doing it". USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and felt that Hall had not "latched onto a particularly original notion of city blight. But he knows how to mine the humor in such desperation". 

Box office:
Its opening weekend netted $3,603,049 and it finished finally at only $5.5 million

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DVD info
Screen:Fullscreen 4:3
Languages: English - Dolby (2.0) Stereo
Subtitles: English for the hearing impaired
Duration: 1 hour and 27 minutes (approx)
Region: PAL, Region 2 - Will only play on European Region 2 or multi-region DVD players.