Review of Thicker Than Water

Introduction

Thicker Than Water is a gangster film, and rather predictably extols the values of revenge and violence. This kind of thing has been done better in so many other movies, but as an Indie film is surprisingly decent. The film is realistic in its portrayal of the gangland warfare between rappers (as if I’m a good judge of that) and features what I understand to be a cast and cameos by many famous rappers, including Ice Cube (of recent Three Kings fame).

Video

The picture is pretty bad, with muted colours, strange skin tones and a very low-definition picture. I have seen worse, but not much worse.

Audio

The soundtrack is the best thing about this movie, which is probably why this film was made in the first place. The producer (and star) of this film probably knew that many people would watch this film just because they love rap and hiphop, so as expected the soundtrack features many good tunes. A 5.1 mix is provided, but then it is not focussed or well made- it is basically a prologic track put onto 5.1 output.

Features

Looking at the extra features, I was expecting a lot from this long list. Unfortunately they are a let down. The menus are poor, and you waste a lot of time trying to get from one screen to another. There is a trailer and some quite informative production notes. The best supplement is the music videos, which seem to have a better picture than the film itself. The worse thing is the Death Row preview. This is about the infamous record label that has been involved in the East vs. West turf wars in the US. The picture is, hands down, the worse I have ever seen in my entire life. It is so soft that it looks like it has been smeared with lard. The colours are almost indiscernible and it has been cropped to Pan & Scan. Maybe you should see this promo just for the novelty value, if you can stand the pain...

Conclusion

Thicker Than Water was better than I thought, an action-cum-thriller with what is supposed to have a moral message. It was almost gripping for the first hour, then faded away and then finally collapsed at the end, due to an implausible plot twist, and the fact that the ending and too much information (including the relevance of the almost cryptic title) was squeezed in the last 5 minutes. Worth watching though, if you are a fan of the music or the genre.