Few films manage the level of realism that this one achieves, as half the time it’s hard to tell if what’s going on is entirely fabricated. Snow on tha Bluff is raw, and in this case, that’s a very good thing. Those elements are certainly present, but they accent rather than define the picture. The film takes place in a high crime area in Atlanta called “The Bluff,” and functions more as a ground-level exposé of those who live there than a strictly plotted tale of gangbanging and gunplay.
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Opening with the pilfering of a video camera from a car full of unsuspecting college students, Snow on tha Bluff wastes no time getting into the rough landscape of star Curtis Snow’s life.
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Plot beats and their timing are obvious and after awhile, Gang Tapes begins to resemble a simplistic listing of things that generally happen in the hood (complete with a drive-by retaliation, an initiation beating, a lesson in cooking crack cocaine, the first time shooting a gun and a homie funeral). The majority of scenes are painfully stagey, the performances are unnatural and the narrative is too rigorously, “perfectly” structured to come anywhere near mirroring how life actually unfolds. The film takes pains trying to convince viewers that what they are seeing is genuine by having characters maneuver the camera in an overly awkward manner, but the director’s influence is unmistakably visible. The problem lies in the inability to realistically capture the environment and events of the central child’s life. However, the commendable material stops there, for outside of the film’s conceptual innovation, Gang Tapes is a tedious and ineffective piece of work. Additionally, there are some decent inclusions involving the kid setting the camera up in his room as he flexes and acts “gangster” for an imaginary audience. thug life, scenes occasionally begin and end messily, as actual recordings would. Largely shot by a 14 year old boy who is quickly being drawn into the South Central L.A. To address the positives, the film does a good job of maintaining the continuity of what is intended to be seen as home video footage. In fact, it misses the mark by a wide margin. Of course, I say “in theory,” because Gang Tapes doesn’t exactly reach the potential of that setup. Rather than enhancing the visceral nature of fear and paranormal happenings for the purpose of nail-biting horror, the concept, in theory, is meant to heighten the gritty realism of poverty-stricken, crime-riddled communities, ultimately confronting the audience with tough truths. Released just two years after The Blair Witch Project popularized the found footage genre, Gang Tapes was – to my knowledge – the first film to use the approach to chronicle the day-to-day life of black urban youth.
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