The first 10-15 minutes of this film had me wriggling in my seat and wondering if I was going to be able to sit through it. It starts with the central character, Inez, a hard-faced inmate leaving Riker's Island and re-starting her life back in New York after an unspecified prison term. Inez is clearly a tough cookie and even her first meeting her son Terry on the street had me silently screaming "run, kid, run!" It turns out that Terry had been put in foster care and, when he ends up in hospital shortly after, Inez goes to visit him and decides to kidnap him from the authorities under whose care he had been placed.

However, I found myself getting sucked in to the story, as grim and sometimes hard to watch as it was. Here we had a woman who had nothing - no money, no home and few prospects - grabbing a child because she somehow believed she could give him a better life. Her first act after snatching him was to phone around former acquaintances to beg for a free place to stay and it was truly heartbreaking to watch her desperation and the glimpse of the life she had brought this child into.

Yet she manages to get on her feet and the rest of the movie follows her, Terry and the man she marries, Lucky, as they if not thrive certainly survive. As compelling as the human characters become, there is another star of this film and that is the New York neighbourhood of Harlem. With the liberal use of overhead shots and long street scenes we see the neighbourhood go from grungy through a gradual gentrification. This is reflected more intimately in a sub plot where their new landlord tries to manipulate the family out of their low rent home, and leave them with fallen ceilings, broken pipes and a non-functioning shower.

There is a plot twist at the end that made my jaw drop which I see some people didn't like, but which I thought fleshed out the character of Inez quite well and gave depth to her motivations. All in all a gritty movie that was hard to watch in some places, a raw and honest depiction of the brutal poverty in which people sometimes live, but underscored by excellent performance by all.

I was SO looking forward to this and the trailer really made it seem like it was going to be both really intense and a tearjerker.

For me, it failed to deliver on both of those points. I was bored and struggled to stay engaged. It wasn't until the final 15 or 20 minutes of the film that things started to get interesting enough to warrant sticking it out to the end.

Until then, it felt like a bunch of rather jumbled-up plot lines that didn't come together coherently. There wasn't a strong thread of a story, or at least there didn't seem to be, until the final act.

Plus, I never felt the emotional connection between the son and either of his parental figures -- or between the two parents themselves. None of them seemed particularly attached to each other, so even the final act carried a lot less emotional weight for me, because it didn't feel they'd "been through something" together -- it just felt like they had spent their lives living side by side, but never strongly connected emotionally.

There were a few lines here and there that were meant to telescope the parental figures' devotion to the kid... but they honestly fell flat, because they were just inserted into the middle of what felt like a bunch of random scenes of people just living their lives (I guess I should give points for realism... but I do watch movies to do more than just observe people living ordinary lives).

To be clear, it wasn't the actors' fault. Their performances were really, really good. I just don't think they were given a good enough script to bring things together. The story should have been tighter, more focused, and the script more intense, and then the underlying plot would have really sucker-punched the viewer (because it DOES have a unique plot).

The score is great. And with such good acting and a unique plot, I just wish the final product would have come together better.

I hope Teyana Taylor doesn't pay too much attention to awards because she will be ignored for the reasons we all know - lol, not even esteemed black actresses with excellent performances in big studio films are recognized - but she has every reason to be proud of this work. It's a big surprise to me, as she didn't even take the easy route in this role, which would have been to go a bit over-the-top in the more emotional scenes. No, she always remains restrained, yet still able to convey all the emotions, making everything real and grounded. William Catlett as Lucky also has his standout moments, and all three actors who portray Terry - with Josiah Cross standing out, although I'm not convinced that 4 years is enough for a change of actor - add more emotional weight, humanity, and realism to it all.

A lot of credit has to be given, obviously, to what A. V. Rockwell was capable to build here. With a fairly simple story and a bit eventless for some, she always manages to keep us interested. The writer and director does it through characters that feel like real people, through a mystery that even when not being discussed, lingers in the air, and she does it by showing us a very vibrant city. You can tell that these people are just a part of that place, of that community, and that many more stories like theirs exist. In that aspect, her approaches to opportunities, the prejudices these people face from birth, the struggle against accumulating obstacles, and about gentrification are very good, even if not very deep.

The mood, the calmness that doesn't mean an absence of conflict, and the way it incorporates culture and music into the story, at times, reminds me of the excellent "The Last Black Man in San Francisco," but this is a story that - despite the parallels - has its differences, and the final act is as surprising as it is emotional, with scenes that will hardly leave my memory. One of the best of the year until now.