

Gridlock'd was released January 31, 1997, finishing at #10 at the box office in the United States and Canada for its opening weekend, and went on to a total gross of $5.6 million during its domestic run. Curtis-Hall has caught the bottom-feeder enervation of heroin addiction." Box office Įntertainment Weekly gave the film a "B" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, " Gridlock'd doesn't have the imaginative vision of a movie like Trainspotting, yet it's more literally true to the haphazard torpor of the junkie life than anything we've seen on screen since Drugstore Cowboy.

He gave the film three out of four stars and said, "This is grim material, but surprisingly entertaining, and it is more cause to mourn the recent death of Shakur, who gives his best performance". Similarly, Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that Roth and Shakur "illuminate" a "movie of despair and desperation" with "gritty, goofy comic spirit".

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But he knows how to mine the humor in such desperation". USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and felt that Hall had not "latched onto a particularly original notion of city blight. Desson Howe, for the Washington Post, wrote, "Shakur and Roth, who seem born for these roles, are allowed to take charge – and have fun doing it". The New York Times editor Janet Maslin praised Shakur's performance: "He played this part with an appealing mix of presence, confidence and humor". On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 34 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. Main article: Gridlock'd (soundtrack) Year I can't see anybody else in the movie now apart from Tupac. Larry Fishburne wanted to do it, but we couldn't afford him. It took about another six months to get Tupac because he'd just got out of jail and nobody wanted to touch him.īut there was this one company that really wanted to do the film with Tupac and, once they okayed it, things got a little easier. He read it on the plane back and got on board straight away. Tim was doing Rob Roy in Scotland when I sent him the script. That's the way it usually goes in Hollywood. Then Tupac's record company came up with the money and PolyGram turned around and said, 'Hey, we always liked this movie' (laughs). It's like saying you can't do two romantic comedies. Then PolyGram had just put Trainspotting out and were like, 'We can't do two movies about heroin.' I didn't know anything about Trainspotting. And people were expecting it to be a real depressing movie about a couple of dope fiends. It wasn't that easy because it was about smack, which is a bit of a taboo subject here. I remembered that when it came to writing my first movie. So we ended up wandering around from place to place, no one giving us any help. We were doing a bit of everything and were both sixteen, living with our folks, so we couldn't give our address in case they got to know about what we were doing. Next day, we went to try and get into rehab. One day my best friend, the bassist, and I were sitting around and decided that maybe we could actually play better if we weren't stoned all the time. That was the way we thought we could play faster guitar, write better songs. It's largely autobiographical, with a lot of it coming from the time when I was a teenager in Detroit, playing guitar and singing in bands. Throughout a disastrous day, the two addicts dodge police and local criminals while struggling with an apathetic government bureaucracy that thwarts their entrance to a drug rehabilitation program. Spoon and Stretch decide to kick their habit after Cookie overdoses on her first hit. They are in a band – in the spoken word genre – called Eight Mile Road, with Cookie on lead vocals, Spoon on bass guitar and Stretch on piano. Set in Detroit, Gridlock'd centers around heroin addicts Spoon, Stretch and Cookie. ( April 2023) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) You can provide one by editing this article. This article needs an improved plot summary.
