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Belly (1998)
Director: Hype Williams
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
The unremarkable presence of a gaggle of rap stars is just part of the problem with this ill advised first feature. Working with Spike Lee's cinematographer Maleek Sayeed, HipHop promo director Williams indulges in a stream of stylised compositions: characterisation is absent and the narrative feels like a cosmetic overlay. Insofar as there's any story, it's about a posse of drug dealers falling out over their vision of the future. (Nasty, brutish and short? Or to retire and start a family?) An unrelenting spectacle of guns, girls, drugs, cash, cars, clubs and cool apartments, scored to endless use of the term 'nigga', it looks suspiciously like a deliberate exercise in audience alienation.Author: NB
Cast & crew
Director: Hype Williams
Producer: Ron Rotholz, Hype Williams, Robert Salerno, Larry Meistrich
Cast: Nas Nasir Jones, DMX Earl Simmons, Taral Hicks, Tionne 'T-Boz' Watkins, Method Man Clifford Smith full cast
Duration: 96 mins
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