Something tells me rapper/media mogul/Diddy troll Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is the one responsible for the new movie “Moses the Black” getting a theatrical rollout. The man’s name is the first credit you see in this brazenly low-budget hood drama.
This movie is actually made up of two hood dramas.
The first one deals with Malik (Omar Epps), a Chicago crime boss freshly released from jail and ready to inflict vengeance on Straw (Quavo, from the rap crew Migos), the rival gang leader who took out one of his chief lieutenants. Apart from being one of the most feared-but-respected kingpins in the city, Malik acts more like a bruised man living on borrowed time. He spends less time on the street and more time having heart-to-hearts with friends and family. Before she passes, his grandmother gives him a saint prayer card of the titular Ethiopian hieromonk, a former “gang member”—grandma’s words—who went on to live a life of discipline and sacrifice.
It’s in these scenes that “Moses” exudes a soulfulness that’s almost admirable. Rocking a withered face, an always-shiny bald head, and a gait that sometimes has him walking like an old, antiques-shop owner, Epps plays his American gangster as a man of constant sorrow. He’s the veteran-villain archetype, fully aware he’s too late to right the wrongs he’s committed.
Epps is all lone-wolf bluster, speaking in soft, stealthy tones, usually spitting some sort of thoughtful bromide that shows he was definitely reading and looking inward while inside. But since he also appears to own a boxing gym, he’s always ready to level someone. There’s one rather superfluous scene where Epps shows off his boxing skills and whoops three rival gang members in the ring—before they get predictably murdered by lieutenant 2wo-3ree (rapper/executive producer/soundtrack coordinator Wiz Khalifa).
Now, here’s where we get to the second movie, a sleazy shoot-’em-up where a rapper and his cronies get to gang-bang on the big screen and on the cheap. (I blame Master P for this.) Khalifa’s trigger-happy goon wants to take out Straw and his gang, mainly because they’ve been calling his boys “booty bandits” on social media—an offense which, according to this movie, could easily get you smoked on the streets of Chicago. The scenes with Khalifa and his team of indecipherable young gangsters are the most inept, with their amateurishly staged shootouts and the actors obviously ad-libbing ghetto gobbledygook.
Truth be told, “Moses” is supposed to be an inspirational flick. Model-turned-actress-turned-Orthodox Christian filmmaker Yelena Popovic attempts to have this inner-city story mirror Moses’s, even having the saint (played here by Chukwudi Iwuji) pop up in Malik’s dreams, going through hell in deserted, fourth-century Egypt. (The desert scenes are filled with in-yo-face, disconcerting close-ups that had me thinking Popovic has got to be a fan of Terrence Malick’s later work.)
But it seems like Popovic only put actual effort in the Epps scenes, while letting Khalifa and Quavo just do dumb hood shit as the cameras rolled. Those scenes are the most stereotypically ridiculous. We even have a deranged, corrupt cop (Steppenwolf Theatre vet Cliff Chamberlain, acting like—as my mother would say—a gotdamn fool) running around dressed like Jamie Kennedy in “Malibu’s Most Wanted,” saying and doing the craziest things while craving to take down Malik and his kind. It all peters out in the third act, with both Popovic and Epps really leaning into the martyrdom thing, even having Epps all weepy and regretful in an Orthodox Church.
Believe it or not, the lopsided tone reminded me of “The Hollywood Knights,” the 1980 raunchfest about another gang: a 1960s era crew of teenage motorheads. While most of the film is screwball (with a pre-“Arli$$” Robert Wuhl leading the charge as a merry prankster), there are also these weirdly sincere moments with a senior member (“Taxi”-era Tony Danza) hanging with friends and chilling with his girl (a young Michelle Pfeiffer).
As you’ve probably figured out by now, I would rather talk about any movie other than “Moses the Black” right now. May it languish in that never-ending, DIY Black movie pit known as Tubi.
