In this contemporary moralist drama, five young African-American men and one woman gather in an apartment after the funeral of a friend. Trying to escape from the afternoon's somber mood, they talk, watch TV, listen to music, crack jokes, smoke marijuana, and try to avoid the social, political, and emotional issues behind the black-on-black crime devastating their community. However, these issues still present themselves, whether or not they are invited into the proceedings.—Larry B.
Set in a Boston apartment during Thanksgiving weekend, Kairo (Lord Harrison) hosts a wake whom the guests include Kairo's best friend, Herb (MyQuan), who has dreams of playing pro basketball but little real drive to succeed; quieter, watchfully critical Hope (Thomas Braxton Jr.); Griz (Rob Florestal), a drug dealer with a hair-trigger temper; his exasperated flunky, Ren (Damian); and lone female Dee (Naomi Ramsey), who works with Kairo at a Cambridge advertising company. Several characters have just attended yet another street-slain friend's funeral; an answering-machine message offers condolences from a pal currently in prison. Still, the casual party soon relaxes into badly needed R&R, helped by constant rotation of "blunts" (hand-rolled marijuana-and-tobacco combination cigarettes). Street-slang, rapid-fire conversation eludes easy tracking at times, as they talk about shared pop-culture interests; Black Entertainment Network and Sesame Street among other things. Griz's hard-core eye-for-an-eye, survivalist philosophies keep clashing against Dee's peacenik spirituality; other figures inhabit a gray zone in between. Out of nowhere, the group learns from a TV news report that Hope's entire family was shot "execution-style." Griz and Ren secretly go off to settle this score on the suspected gang members; this results in police wrecking the apartment, hauling Hope and Kairo off to jail. This spiral of violence continues, dwindling the group's number over just a few days' course. When a final line is crossed, two remaining figures are face-to-face with guns.
