LUV Reviews
Top CriticDirector-co-writer Sheldon Candis stretches a lot of the time, a romantic story seems to have been cut drastically, and the film's climax is far too typical.
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| Original Score: C+
A sometimes taut and occasionally preposterous day in the life of an 11-year-old accompanying his uncle on business in Baltimore.
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| Original Score: 2/4
What begins as a promising peek into the tragic cycle of waylaid promise that's crippling broken inner-city families is itself dispiritingly pulled sideways in the Baltimore-set indie "LUV."
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| Original Score: 2/5
Both for good and for ill, "LUV" has a film-school feeling about it, and channels a legacy of fatalistic American crime cinema that includes "Mean Streets" and "Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
Saved from its predictable plotline by a strong cast and a central relationship written and performed with sensitivity, LUV reveals the stakes of trusting in a role model and the costs when that person turns out to be human.
"LUV" may not convince with Woody's aggressively telescoped transformation. But the actors compensate.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
It does not entirely succeed, but at its best "Luv" shows the kind of heart and intelligence that is always welcome - and often missing - in American movies.
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| Original Score: 3/5
The first half of the movie is painfully tense, drawing us into a relationship that we desperately want to see work. But the screenplay lets its characters down, as it devolves into platitudes and melodrama.
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| Original Score: 2/5
his contains plenty of incidental pleasures, including some vibrant images of contemporary Baltimore and fun character turns from Charles S. Dutton, Danny Glover, and Dennis Haysbert.
The rapper and actor Common has become a highly skilled screen star, but this touchy-feely dud does him wrong.
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| Original Score: C-
Here is a film about African Americans that sidesteps all the usual, hopeful cliches and comments on how one failed generation raises another.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A kind of "Training Day" hoping for interstitial Terrence Malick poetry in the Baltimore landscape of "The Wire" with the occasional sensationalism of an action film.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Although Common and Rainey make a well-matched duo, their chemistry is frequently squandered by a script (co-written by director Sheldon Candis and Justin Wilson) that boxes them into impossible roles in one clichéd scene after another.
With its rock-skimming male bonding alternating between grisly homicides and a florid Mexican standoff that begets a tidy take-the-money-and-run finale, this tale seems less timely than merely tall.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Candis generally displays solid skills, and clearly works well with actors.
Heartfelt and formulaic in equal measure.
