Somewhat dreary film about a guy coming to his hometown after his father's death after several years of being banished for snitching on the local black panther organization (of which he was a member.) While it'd be nice to report that it was an original and daring film about a subculture that few films are ever made about,(and a nicely textured one at that) the events and drama that happen during the film for the most part are pretty run of the mill standard issue guy reconnects with long lost love of his life while revisiting old stomping grounds melodrama.

While the idea of several ex black panther party members trying to move on with their lives is an intriguing one, and one that is handled with a great deal of technical skill by the director...the screenplay doesn't really seem to develop many of the characters. If you think i'm wrong, just keep in mind that at the end of the film we don't know anything more about the Anthony mackie character then we did at the beginning. When he suddenly announces he has to leave....the announcement only made me realize that i don't know where he's going back to, only that the events of the past 80 minutes have if anything made him even a stronger believer in his need to escape his old hometown. I suppose that the town's definition of him is the point of the screenplay---what little you learn about him, you learn via his actions when confronted with danger, or you learn via exposition provided by the other characters...but at the end of the film the only thing you really know about him is that his desire to escape the townspeople's perceived image of him--which is something that you kind of grasp within the first 15 or 20 minutes when you see how his brother treats him, or how the other people in the film treat him at first sight. The need for Mackie to escape the town and start over or he'll end up in as dangerous a situation as Kerry Washington's brother did is a good jumping off point but i'm not sure if him just reaffirming his position on that stance is as good an ending as could've been written for his character.

However Mackie is at least well defined compared to the various other characters appearing here, the more screen time Kerry Washington's brother gets, the less sympathetic (or original) he comes off as. Played as a shell shocked survivor defined by the amount of damage inflicted on him by his living in the town...he's still just a wee bit unbalanced and messed up too ever really register as a fully fleshed out character...he's fed up to here with the way the white cops treat him...but did he ever not feel fed up? His one dimensional character is hard to muster up the needed compassion for which kinda takes the sting out of what ultimately ends up happening to him. With the amount of screen time that the film dedicates to him and his troubled mind, i kind of wished that once again the film would leave him in a far more interesting place or at least do more with him once his behavior finally escalated into the kind of violence that couldn't be glossed over. What happens to him is a cliché, and one that should've been made more interesting to watch. Meanwhile if Mackie is the "you can't go home again" character then Kerry Washington's brother is the stock unstable loose cannon character...then Kerry Washington's character at least remains an interesting bedrock upon which the other two characters revolve around. Belivably torn between her need to stay true to her roots in the town and the need to start over (if not for herself then for her daughter)her initial attempts to do both at the same time make her somewhat interesting , but again the more the screenplay has her relating why she has the need to stay in Philly...the less believable her reasons become.

Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington as the love of his life while both offering fine restrained performances (both actors nicely underplay the anger both characters feel at their circumstances.) also have definite screen chemistry as well....and that chemistry is what ultimately keeps the film from going completely off the tracks in terms of sustaining your interest in the outcome of the story. Both actors bring a lot of good will and much likability to the characters they're playing. It says a lot about how much the 2 actors keep the film watchable and reasonably involving that in spite of weaknesses in the story, and a somewhat sluggish pacing you do root for the two of them to make it through the events of the film and end up together happily ever after--but not as much as you should be.