The DVD-movie is a shortening of a series planned for TV, and it really moves. Still and all, it holds together extremely well. The high-point of the threatened violence for me was a confrontation between the V-Dubs and the Chinese Mafia on a basketball court in Chinatown in San Francisco.
(From left to right: Ken Leung, Darris Love, and Ben Crowley.)
In this scene on a basketball court, Anthony Mackey explains the facts of life to Ken Leung, to wit, that any gang war fought between the Chinese Mafia and the V-Dubs will be fought in Chinatown, not in Hunters Point; or impliedly, H.P. is already a waste land, whereas Chinatown depends on tourists and "business as usual" and would be enormously adversely impacted by a gang war while H.P. would be essentially unaffected. Leung gets the point: compared to street African-Americans, Chinatown Chinese are, like, liquor-running Italians during Prohibition, when American protestant provincialism confined them to small geographical areas within large American cities.
The high point of the movie's actual violence, for me, was the fatal confrontation between Ben Crowley and Darris Love in a public bathroom; although a previous, surprise execution of an African-American child was also extremely chilling.
Do see this movie. It's very good and it's available at Netflix. It does not disappoint.
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