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Bomb the System (2005)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:21
Fresh:7
Rotten:14
Average Rating:5.1/10
Consensus: Given the movie's premise, one would assume it's gritty and street-smart, but in reality it's a slave to stale cliches and formula.
Synopsis: "The average New Yorker sees upwards of 50 pieces of graffiti a day. But they never stop to think about the stories behind those pieces… this is one of those stories." Bomb the System is the first... "The average New Yorker sees upwards of 50 pieces of graffiti a day. But they never stop to think about the stories behind those pieces… this is one of those stories." Bomb the System is the first feature in over 20 years to delve into the world of graffiti art. The film, shot entirely on the streets of New York City, is the feature debut of 23-year-old writer/director Adam Bhala Lough. Mark Webber (People I Know, Storytelling, The Laramie Project) leads a talented young ensemble cast as Blest, a 19-year-old graffiti writer fresh out of high school with no ambition for the future. New York City is Blest's playground. He spends his days stealing spray paint from local hardware stores - and his nights getting high and "bombing" the streets with his graffiti crew. He is the most wanted writer on the NYPD Vandal Squad's hit list, and at the same time, is attracting attention from the local gallery scene. But things quickly turn ugly when 15-year-old Lune, the youngest member of Blest's crew, is arrested and brutalized by the NYPD. The crew retaliates by waging an all out "graffiti war" against the city: a war that ends up costing more than one life in the end. Bomb the System is a true New York story - a cinematic poem dedicated to the art of graffiti, and to the city where it all began more than two decades ago. © -- Drops Entertainment [More]
Starring: Mark Webber, Gano Grills, Jaclyn DeSantis, Bonz Malone
Starring: Mark Webber, Gano Grills, Jaclyn DeSantis, Bonz Malone, Jade Yorker, Al Sapienza, Lee Quinones, Kumar Pallana, Joey Dedio, Stephen Buchanan
Director: Adam Bhala Lough
Director: Adam Bhala Lough
Screenwriter: Adam Bhala Lough
Producer: Ben Rekhi, Sol Tryon
Composer: El-P
Studio: Palm Pictures
Reviews for Bomb the System
The story is so loosely developed and devoid of suspense, it barely seems to exist.
I came out of this wishing the paint can crowd would settle for tattoos.
Thoroughly fails to convince that its handful of New York characters known as 'bombers,' graffiti mongers futilely yearning for immortality via nightly despoiling of public and private property, is of any tragic interest.
The film half-heartedly paints their actions as rebel-chic heroism even when it has all the integrity of tomcats spraying outside their yards...
Notable mainly for its hallucinatory, tripped visuals, which go a long way toward compensating for a less-than-riveting narrative.
A richly textured drama with an angry poetic edge that gets inside the obsessive subculture of New York graffiti artists.
A didactic ode to a lifestyle that makes little sense, no matter the darkly romantic rebel-with-a-cause ideas associated with what is essentially an act of vandalism.
In the end it's all seductive surface and no substance, but Lough has a bold eye and a vivid sense of uniquely urban beauty.
Preachy and single-minded, populated by a world of sympathetic heroes and hissable villains.
A mild, slow-moving drama that belatedly tries to argue that graffiti writers are political artists, not an urban blight.
A flashy but numbingly hollow compendium of Trainspotting-inspired visual gimmicks, Lough's tale of New York City 'bombers' is formulaic in the extreme.
This fictional take on the subject mostly avoids bombing in the bad-movie sense, but could stand to calm down a little.
Lough's impressive, if uneven, debut feature captures the adrenaline rush and contradictory nature of the simultaneously creative and criminal activity but stumbles in its attempt to justify it as an art form.
Adam Bhala Lough's hot little melodrama rhapsodizes the lives of contemporary graffiti artists.
Lough references Basquiat, without naming him, but in the end can't quite hijack the late artist's cred for his own hit-and-run movie.
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