Beat Street (1984) Orion Pictures/Musical-Drama RT: 106 minutes Rated PG (language, some violence, adult situations) Director: Stan Lathan Screenplay: Andrew Davis, David Gilbert and Paul Golding Music: Webster Lewis (score), Harry Belafonte and Arthur Baker (produced) Cinematography: Tom Priestly Release date: June 8, 1984 (US) Starring: Rae Dawn Chong, Guy Davis, Jon Chardiet, Leon W. Grant, Saundra Santiago, Robert Taylor, Mary Alice, Shawn Elliott, Jim Borrelli, Franc Reyes, Dean Elliot, Tonya Pinkins, Lee Chamberlain, Antonia Rey, Duane Jones. Box Office: $16.5M (US)
Rating: ***
There’s one thing that always bugged me about Beat Street, a musical drama set during the early days of the New York City hip-hop scene. Many scenes featured in the trailer are nowhere to be found in the movie. In fact, the trailer looks like it’s advertising a completely different movie than the one that opened in June ‘84. Otherwise, I like it. It focuses on the lives of four young people living in the South Bronx- Kenny (Davis), a disc jockey/MC; his younger brother Lee (Taylor, Avenging Force), a breakdancer who performs with the Beat Street Breakers (the New York City Breakers) and their friends graffiti artist Ramon (Chardiet) and Chollie (Grant, Playing for Keeps), a self-styled manager/promoter.
All of the youngsters have big dreams to make it big and get out of the South Bronx. Beat Street follows them over the Christmas season of ’83 when it looks like Kenny might finally catch that big break. Chollie sets it up so Kenny can do a guest spot at the Burning Spear where he spins a few records and stages a special Christmas-themed skit. Lee and his crew have a dance battle with a rival troupe, the Bronx Rockers (the Rock Steady Crew) at the Roxy nightclub one night. Tracy (Chong, Commando) asks him to come and audition for a show she’s putting on at the city college. She later gets romantically involved with Kenny. Chollie uses Kenny’s success at the Burning Spear to get him the New Year’s Eve performance at the Roxy (the hottest nightclub in NYC).
Ramon, whose graffiti tag is “Ramo” is getting grief from his father (Shawn Elliot) about getting an honest job and forgetting about drawing pictures on the walls around the neighborhood. He’s also getting it from his girlfriend and baby mama Carmen (Santiago, Miami Vice) about getting them a place of their own. Ramo gets great pleasure from sharing his art with the people of the city; he thinks it’s great that his work is seen throughout many different boroughs. The only problem is a rival graffiti artist who sprays his tag “Spit” all over everybody else’s work.
Beat Street, in its present form, is a pretty good movie but I’d like to see a Director’s Cut that restores all the excised footage if it still even exists. I think that might make for a more focused movie. With all the different plot threads, it ends up losing some of the dramatic impact it could have had. The scenes in the trailer seem to clarify a few things. Also, there are a few more musical numbers including one in a high school classroom. According to Wikipedia, Kadeem Hardison (Rappin’) had a small role in the movie that ended up being deleted entirely. What’s left is a decent enough movie. Any dramatic flaws are compensated for by some great musical sequences. The aforementioned Christmas show at the Burning Spear, a club run by DJ Kool Herc, features the Treacherous Three, Doug E. Fresh and the Magnificent Force as they do a rap number called “Santa’s Rap”. It’s one of the many musical highlights of Beat Street. Among the various artists featured in this movie are Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force & Shango, Tina B., The System, Brenda Starr, Andy B. Bad, Fantastic Duo, Us Girls, Jazzy Jay, Richard Sisco and Wanda Dee. Director Stan Lathan (Amazing Grace) assembled quite a roster of musical talent from the early days of breakdancing and rapping. It’s the most awesome part of the movie and I’m not even a fan of the genre.
The climactic scene of Beat Street is an elaborate number that features Grandmaster Melle Mel & the Furious Five, Bernard Fowler and a Bronx gospel choir, dancers from the city college and breakdancers from the New York streets. It’s a celebration of life as Grandmaster Melle Mel decries the violence of the world and Fowler sings about believing in the face of tragedy. It’s my favorite sequence in this movie because it’s such a powerful moment and it incorporates a lot of different talent. I also like Tina B.’s song “Nothing’s Gonna Come Easy” even though only a small portion of it is heard in the movie. If memory serves, there were two soundtrack albums released from this movie because there was so much music. In addition, the breakdancing in Beat Street is absolutely fresh. The real life dance crews really know how to bust some serious moves and when they’re strutting their stuff on the screen, the movie totally comes to life. And who doesn’t like the human beat-box stylings of Doug E. Fresh?
I’ve talked endlessly about the music in Beat Street but what about the other aspects of it? Like I said, it falters when it comes to the dramatic elements; it would have been nice to get to know certain characters better. For example, what about Henri (Dean Elliot), the squatter the guys discover living in the basement of the abandoned building where they party at the beginning of the movie? They all seem to become friends but who is this guy really? We understand that he’s an old friend of somebody who used to live in the building before the landlord torched the place but at what point does he become part of the crew? It’s implied he’s some sort of musician. He says that he and his old friend planned to start a band. Why doesn’t he display his skills at any point in the movie? In the trailer, it’s shown (briefly) that he plays the drums. I would have liked to see this incorporated into the plot. We see a couple of scenes where Ramo and his father argue about how he should live his life but it would have been interesting to see their relationship explored with some more depth. And exactly what did happen to Kenny and Lee’s older brother? We get the impression he was in a gang and died as a result of that lifestyle but was he shot in a gang war or by the police? The only clue is the scene where Lee’s mother (Alice, Sparkle) shows contempt towards the cop that arrested her son for breakdancing at a subway station. It’s a small but powerful moment but we still don’t fully understand how her oldest son died.
The only reason I can come up with about why so many scenes were cut from Beat Street is the studio insisted Lathan keep the running time down. Who wants to watch a two-and-a-half hour movie especially in the summer? True, this movie is pretty shallow but it never promised to be an in-depth character study or a realistic documentary about the hip-hop scene of the early 80s. It still would have been cool to add an additional layer of depth and meaning. It would have been nice to understand a few things about the young people who breakdance on the sidewalks or the graffiti artists who see all the surfaces of the world as their own personal canvas.
In any event, Beat Street is an entertaining movie that moves to a funky beat. Like Krush Groove, it’s interesting to watch for its historical context, a document of another time where breakdancing could be seen on almost every street corner and rapping was a joyous form of musical expression. From that point of view, Beat Street is def!
