Linewatch

Rating R Formats DVD Genre thriller Starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Evan Ross, Omari Hardwick, Dean Norris, Malieek Straughter, AMG, Sharon Leal Directed by Kevin Bray Publisher Sony Pictures

Cuba Gooding, Jr. is a good actor. That’s not a surprise. What IS a surprise is that Linewatch wasn’t released in theaters. It really is a pretty good movie about an idea that has been overplayed in almost all forms of media: your past has a tendency to come back and haunt you.

Gooding, Jr. plays Michael Dixon, a border patrol officer in New Mexico. When he and his partner find a truck full of dead illegal immigrants, he follows the trail to a shootout in which his partner is shot and he sees someone he thought he would never see again – a ghost from his past. A member of the gang he used to be associated with back when he lived in LA. As plenty of films have taught us, you don’t just leave a gang and expect everything to be fine in the morning…or years down the line. But just because this idea has been played upon before doesn’t make this movie any less entertaining.

When the High Noon Gang rolls into town, they force Dixon to help them with a drug deal. It seems like a simple enough plot. But the performances in the film are so well done, the cinematography so good, that the simplicity is completely forgotten. Gooding plays a great family man haunted by his past (shades of Viggo Mortensen in History of Violence), and Sharon Leal is convincing as a supportive wife, but it’s the members of the gang that steal the show. They create such an uncomfortably confident atmosphere I found myself literally squirming in my seat. They never seem to go over the top, nor do they conform to the stereotypical gangster persona – each character has his own distinct personality. There’s the cool, confident leader, Drake (Omari Hardwick), the book-smart Stokes (AMG), the wannabe tag-along Little Boy (Evan Ross), and, my personal favorite, the sleezeball Cook (played by Coolio’s half-brother, Malieek Straughter).

This movie very easily could have taken place anywhere in the nation: LA, Miami, New York, Chicago. But by placing the film in the desert of New Mexico, one already has the pervading sense of discomfort. Other movies have capitalized on the desert setting in the past, including No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada; there’s something about the desert – the sun, the lack of green and water, the endless expanse of sand and stone – that make it simultaneously beautiful and discomforting. Add in the human discomfort, along with decent acting and writing, and you have a recipe for a decent film. Luckily, we have better than decent acting in this film. Everyone does a surprisingly good job.

In the past that straight-to-DVD movies have been looked down upon as second-rate. I think this is as good an example as any that the idea is becoming a dated one. Such movies are proving to be more and more decent. Why this movie didn’t make it into the theaters is beyond me. Sure, it lacks the special effects and, outside of Gooding, Jr., the star power, but never underestimate the power that human drama can have on a moviegoer. When push comes to shove, it’s the human aspect that truly makes a movie.