Television director Neema Barnette directs the forceful drama Civil Brand, based on a story by Preston A. Whitmore II. Shot with a micro-budget of 500,000 dollars, the film stars confrontational rap and hip-hop artists Mos Def, MC Lyte, and Da Brat. The story concerns a women's prison that exploits its largely African-American inmate population as cheap labor to manufacture products for a corporation. Mostly incarcerated due to domestic violence situations, the inmates also face sexual abuse as
the hands of the prison staff, headed by Captain Deese (Clifton Powell) and Warden Nelson (Reed McCants). Accused of murder, Frances Shepard (Lisa Rae) joins forces with inmates Little Momma (Lark Voorhies), Wet (Monica Calhoun), and Nikki Barnes (N'Bushe Wright), as well as law student Michael (Mos Def), in order to start an uprising. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
Plagued by continuity problems, ham-fisted storytelling and a problematic voiceover by Da Brat, Civil Brand feels less like a prison movie than a prison sentence.
Wildly uneven, rife with a virtual checklist of human tragedies that build to easy emotional crescendos but fail to engage the audience well enough to evoke any meaning.
This is a film about the abuses of privatization and presents a negative view of what might happen if corporate America gets control of the business of corrections.
Hollywood still doesn?t seem to understand that just because someone can sing doesn't mean they can act. If this film doesn't prove that point, nothing will.
Women behind bars! While that's the perfect set-up for a late-night, soft-core cable movie, this flick is guilty of being nothing more than a jailhouse crock.
If Civil Brand works ... as an updated women's prison melodrama with a strong whisper of political consciousness, there are some crippling flaws in the film.
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