“A-Yo it’s hard living in this sardine can Man.”
There is nothing outstanding about this little film from the late 90s, the director never really went on to make bigger things, the only actor that I recognise as still being “in work” is Brendan Sexton III, hardly a household name and the film is rarely mentioned in lists of any description; underrated, forgotten, minor classics… even where are they now.
But for some reason I really like it.
Low key and unassuming from first frame to last, Hurricane Streets follows a 15 year old kid and his young mates for a couple of weeks in the unnamed city n which they live. But really this is all about Marcus (Sexton). Marcus has no father and his mum is in prison. He lives with his grandma who owns a scungy bar with seemingly no clientele. We never really see Marcus at home as he is always hanging with his friends either on the streets or in their “clubhouse”, an underground cellar type place where they smoke, drink, talk shit and play darts. Being 15 and without any adult guidance the kids get up to some small time mischief, shoplifting mainly for stuff to sell to kids at the local school. One of the kids however, Chip has definitive plans to be “laaaaarge”, he feels that their achievements are small time and wants more. (It should be noted that Chip is also a terrible actor and a total tosser, if you don’t want to punch him several times in the film you were never a teenager.)
Marcus decides one day leave the city to go back to where he grew up, he has no real plans but feels (at 15) that he needs a change. When I was 15 a change meant new shoes or buying a hat – maybe I had no aspirations.
With 3 days to go until he skedaddles though Marcus meets a young girl named Melena and the two hit it off. He also gets nabbed for shoplifting and arrested, finds out more about his Mother and her criminal past than he previously knew and attempts to talk the other boys out of escalating their criminal activity to bigger things.
Shoulda just bought a hat really.
There really isn’t too much more to the film that I can tell, there is a convenient yet contrived plot twist that makes practically no sense whatsoever, but it does lead to one of the better awkward endings to a film that I’ve seen in a long while, one that I mull over each time I see the film.
Given that the main 6 actors in the film are school age a certain degree of settling for less is simply a must, 3 of the 6 are especially awful – Glengarry Glen Ross this ain’t, and Brendan Sexton III at least showed enough to have suggested that he had a future in film, even if he hasn’t yet landed a big role or a lead yet.
It’s hard to talk up a film that no-one else has heard of; and that you probably couldn’t track down nowadays even if you did want to watch it – but Hurricane Streets manages to convince me to see past the flaws and enjoy the film as the simple, uncluttered and unassuming 90 odd minutes that it is.
Final Rating – 8 / 10. A low key indie film that aims for little more than telling a simple story well – and achieves that humble goal.
