Gimme the Loot

It’s the sort of New York summer week where the sidewalk melts. But in writer-director Adam Leon’s SXSW Grand Jury prize-winning cool breeze of a debut, the mood stays amiably balmy. It’s the tale of teenage Bronx graffiti artists Malcolm (Ty Hickson) and Sofia (Tashiana Washington) who, disrespected at every turn by a tougher graffiti gang, decide to tag a legendarily impregnable, daffy holy grail: the sign that pops up at Mets baseball games when a home run’s scored.

The rambling quest for this loot occupies the duo’s time, even as their unspoken attraction simmers. The charm of non-actors Washington and Hicks and the improvisatory-sounding snap of their dialogue are Leon’s trump cards. Sofia’s relentless stream of foul-mouthed patter, cutting all comers to ribbons, and softer, slower Malcolm are an appealing odd couple, in a cinematic world somewhere between rapid-fire Thirties screwball and languid mumblecore.

The old-fashioned values beneath the duo’s petty criminal acts and hot-headed bluster are shown as they call the Mets' ground by its traditional name, Shea Stadium, not its latest corporate rebranding. Like Sofia’s growing demands – between verbal and physical slap-downs of all-comers – to be treated like a “lady”, and Malcolm’s eventual, bashful capacity for chivalry, a gentle decency underpins their acts, and undermines their attempts at crime.

Moments of harshness come when the Queens kids ambush and mildly assault the suddenly helpless Sofia, and in Malcolm’s social misadventures in the apartment of frisky upper-middle class blonde Ginnie (Zoe Lescaze, pictured above right). He’s there at all in his class-crossing capacity as bottom-rung runner for the local marijuana supplier. Dope-fuelled flirting and the problem-solving riches lying around the apartment give Malcolm romantic and criminal delusions of grandeur. Sofia has witheringly baroque scorn for the former ambition (“I suggest you protect your dick proper or else that shit is gonna fall off and roll all the way down the hill”).

A chastening second visit when Ginnie scorns “the drug dealer” in front of her posh girlfriends is followed by an attempt at burglary with the help of the fearsomely tattooed Champion (Meeko Gattuso, pictured left), whose bark, as with everyone else around here, proves worse than his bite. The usually affable Malcolm’s frustrated anger when he’s treated with contempt in the rich girl's world, like the fear of violence that passes like a storm-cloud across Ginnie’s face when she bumps into Malcolm and Sofia alone, and the pair’s embarrassed reaction to it, sketch a more familiar, fractured New York.

Leon’s well-connected work in the East Coast film world prior to this feature includes several years as an assistant to Woody Allen, and Gimme the Loot’s version of the city is at least more open-minded and modern than his former employer's. The hipster patina to its supposed inner city world is sometimes almost stifling, as vintage gospel-soul fills the soundtrack. Still, while it’s on, Gimme the Loot is as refreshing as a mid-summer dip in the pool.

Watch the trailer for Gimme the Loot