Corrupt cops Belushi and Shakur sell coke to dealers, then kill them and recycle the drugs, but their scam starts to unravel when one of their victims turns out to be an undercover DEA agent. Sleazy crime thriller maintains some interest for a while, but falls apart due to its laughably contrived script and a schizophrenic tone that alternates faux-nihilism with shameless sentimentality. The late Shakur shows some talent in his last role, but Belushi gives an embarrassingly hammy performance. Super 35.
   --Leonard Maltin

British actor Tim Roth and the rapper Tupac Shakur are an unexpectedly charismatic and refreshing duo in this off-beat buddy movie. Closer than two brothers, these junkie musicians vow to kick their habits after a soul-shattering New Year's Eve. Gridlock'd is fueled by characterization, of which there is plenty, as the two play off one another with such finesse you would never know Shakur had been a relative novice to the acting profession. Off-beat humor lightens a bleak reality as these outcasts run smack against a brutal bureaucracy. Except for a tired subplot meant to jazz up the action, director Vondie Curtis-Hall employs an inventive approach in this sadly ignored theatrical release.
   --Rochelle O'Gorman

Bullet is a hard criminal who's just been released out of jail. His criminal bodies were waiting for him at the gate and soon the act of crime and drugs starts again. Some old settlements has to be taking care of. In no time a new drugwar in the neighbourhood begins.
   --JJ

Above The Rim is about the dreams of a high school basketball whiz named Kyle (Duane Martin) to use his basketball skills as a ticket out of the inner city. Kyle wants to play in the NBA and when this doesn't work out his best friend, Bugaloo (Marlon Wayans), talks him into visiting a club run by the sinister Birdie (Tupac Shakur), and the kid is seduced by its shabby glamour into agreeing to play for Birdie's team. Birdie is a drug dealer, and that's a fact well known to the tall, silent Shep (Leon), a former Rucker's star who moved out of town but is now back as a security guard at the high school. Shep was once friendly with Kyle's mother (Tonya Pinkins), and now, as they begin to see each other again, he tries to guide Kyle in the direction of college. But Kyle is going to play in the neighborhood Shoot-Out, a tournament held in Rucker's Playground.
   --JJ

Director John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood, Rosewood) made an earnest effort in this, his second, film to say a great deal that is true and relevant about living and loving in a violent, difficult time in American history. Janet Jackson plays a beautician and poet who withdraws into herself after her boyfriend is murdered by gangsters. The late Tupac Shakur plays a postman who tries to get through to her, and the two travel on a course through urban America, connecting with family and community. Singleton has so much on his mind that the film comes out a terrible muddle, but there is a certain integrity peeking through the fog. Shakur makes a startlingly good impression in his film debut, and Jackson strips away her star veneer to play something like a real person--and entirely succeeds. Maya Angelou wrote the poems that pass as those penned by Jackson's character, and she also appears in the film.
   --Tom Keogh