‘Hook Up’ Plays Violence for Laughs

The movie subgenre once known (and denigrated) as “blaxploitation” is alive and well, although today’s specimens (like the recent “Players Club”), unlike the older examples, are often actually made by African Americans, rather than by whites cashing in. The predatory nature of this kind of fare is a constant, though. Is it really a sign of progress that black audiences are now being ripped off by their own?

One thing can be said for the newest of these pictures, “I Got the Hook Up,” an alleged comedy celebrating the fun and excitement of inner-city crime (drive-bys as slapstick): It’s at least consistent; the film itself is a crime in progress.

This is the first movie written and produced--as an acting vehicle for himself--by rapper and music industry entrepreneur Master P, whose No Limit label is (according to the press packet) “the most successful independent record company in the country.” (Nineteen No Limit tunes and/or artists are showcased on the soundtrack.)

In fact, P himself is the film’s strongest element, a sturdy, steadying presence in the midst of grating chaos. Most of the supporting characters are garish eccentrics who face off periodically to scream obscenities at one another.

Master P and the super-hyper stand-up comic A.J. Johnson (“Players Club”) are known as Black and Blue, con artists who have set up a sprawling off-the-books department store in a vacant lot in South-Central L.A. Their scam du jour is peddling jury-rigged illegal cell phones that bug out as often as they ring true. The comic possibilities in the premise of a city full of crossed connections are barely explored. Within minutes, a scary thug (Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr.) gets a bum phone, a money drop goes wrong, and the picture devolves into a chase comedy set to a sledgehammer beat.

The subject matter, as such, is not the problem. Similar material has been deployed by some of the strongest rappers and by the hard-boiled masters of street-level black crime writing: Chester Himes, Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines.

As a filmmaker spinning a tall tale of players, hustlers and thieves, Master P may believe he’s carrying on that urban folklore, Staggerlee tradition. But his actual touchstones seem to be so-called “chitlin circuit” farces, faded reruns of “Sanford and Son” (the junkyard setting) and even the all-in-fun stereotyping of “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” to which the film refers in passing.

* MPAA rating: R for pervasive strong language, crude sexual humor, nudity, drug content. Times guidelines: There’s an expletive (or two or three) in almost every line. Also copious racial slurs and sexual put-downs; glorification of crime; and street-gang violence played for laughs.

‘I Got the Hook Up’

Master P: Black

A.J. Johnson: Blue

Gretchen Palmer: Lorraine

Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr.: T-Lay

Frantz Turner: Dalton

Anthony Boswell: Little Brother

John Witherspoon: Mr. Mims

Dimension Films in association with No Limit Films and Priority Films presents a Shooting Star Pictures production. Director Michael Martin. Producer Jonathan Heuer. Executive Producer Master P. Screenwriter Master P. Story by Master P, Leroy Douglas, and Carrie Mungo. Director of Photography Antonio Calvache. Editor T. David Binns. Costume Designer Jhane Isaacs. Music Toomy Coster & Brad Fairman & Beats By Da Pound. Production Designer Michael Pearce. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

* At selected theaters around Southern California.