DVD REVIEW: STATE PROPERTY 2

The Pitch

“As if rap itself were not embarrassing enough…”

The Humans

Damon Dash (The Woodsman – WTF!?), Mariah Carey (Glitter – Possibly the best film about the mentally retarded, ever!), ODB (Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood – Misunderstood classic.)

Beans (Beanie Sigel) and Dame (Damon Dash) remain as state property (get it?), rotting and plotting in some anonymous maximum-security prison. While they plan their escape, the Philadelphia streets they used to run have gone to shit as numerous different gangsters and thugs screw shit up. Upon their release, Dame and Beans are double crossed and forced to shoot it out, while an unknown kingpin slings each side information about the other. Bullets, blood and bad music reign supreme as this movie crawls to its finale, determining which rapper will live to bang mountains of phat assed hotties.

The Package

This is your standard direct-to-video release, featuring a trailer you’ve never seen and a commentary you couldn’t care less about. While the movie itself is a pile of gazelle testicles, the commentary track is moderately interesting if you enjoy deluded rappers talking about the fantastical life of being a gangster. Other than that, you got nada.

This movie is not so much a fictional drama as it is an autobiographical-documentary. At the end of it all, you learn something. Something so true and meaningful that you walk away wondering how you ever lived with out it…

All gangsters are pussies.

Since when did the word ‘gangster’ become associated with dim-witted, fat junkies that can shoot a gun? It’s outrageous! Gone are the days of Henry Fonda and Richard Widmark; film noir men who were not enormous in stature, but would beat the shit out of you if you fucked with them. That is what I like to call ‘commanding presence’, a trait that has gone the way of Meg Foster. Which is why I call gangsters (gangstars? gangstas?) pussies. They command no more presence than the large aluminum jewelry they brandish. It doesn’t take a lot of skill to shoot a guy at point blank range with a Magnum or shank a guy with 10 of your boys holding him down, but apparently this is what has become of the once moderately respected genre. What’s worse is a gangsta rapper, a person that wants to be a gangster but is too chickenshit to get into a little heat, so they write poems about what they think it would be like. Pussies, the lot of them.

So if overweight chain smokers or skinny suburban kids fit your definition of what ‘tough’ is, by all means, watch this movie. If you enjoy hip-hop beats that strangely resemble Casio keyboard demos, watch this movie. Or if you ran out of pins to stick in your nut-sack and are seeking a new form of punishment, watch this movie.

But don’t watch it if you think you’re going to see a lot of pussy.