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Waist Deep

Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 22 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 11 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Crime | Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Vondie Curtis-Hall
Darin Scott
Michael Mahern (story)
Directed by: Vondie Curtis-Hall
Release Date:
Theatrical: June 23, 2006
DVD: October 10, 2006
Running Time: 97 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for strong violence and pervasive language
Starring Tyrese Gibson, Meagan Good, Larenz Tate, The Game, Henry Hunter Hall, and Kimora Lee
In the urban action thriller Waist Deep, director Vondie Curtis Hall takes audiences on a ride through contemporary Los Angeles -- where a sexy 21st-century Bonnie and Clyde hit the streets. (Rogue Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Glitter
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Sometimes excessiveness and implausibility are virtues in disguise. Movies this enjoyable don't come about by accident.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Gregory Kirschling
Curtis Hall keeps slipping in surprising social and emotional flavorings rarely found in the genre.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Director Vondie Curtis Hall gives this virtually nonstop crime actioner, set against the mean streets of Los Angeles, pleasing noirish touches along with larger-than-life-size characters.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves
The performances are pretty good--with the exception of the nauseatingly sweet H. Hunter Hall (the son of the director) as Junior and a one-note scowl from rapper The Game, who plays Meat--and the screenplay, by Hall and Darin Scott, has some genuinely funny moments.
Read Full Review >Variety Justin Chang
Waist Deep packs considerable energy and style into its tale of an ex-con forced back into a life of crime to rescue his kidnapped son. Yet the kinetic direction and occasional sly humor can't disguise the tale's banal brutality or pump much excitement into its routinized pileup of shoot-outs and car chases.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Teresa Wiltz
No, it's not a great movie. It is, however, an interesting one.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
By most of the ways movies are usually judged, pretty much of a mess. The camerawork is jerky and distracting, the dialogue is cliched and the story makes so little sense that the script seems to have been improvised by the actors as they went along.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Billed as an action thriller, it plays out as an urban-fairy tale version of "Bonnie and Clyde," with an ending suitable for a Harlequin romance.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Chuck Wilson
Gibson and Good deliver such emotionally honest performances that we wish them a happy ending, no matter how many movie clichés have to be trotted out to get there.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
Unapologetically a B movie, its narrative premise whittled down to a mean little nub and placed carefully on the borderline between the wildly implausible and the completely absurd.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Gene Seymour
As its plot thickens, Waist Deep gets more outlandish. The whole mess empties out into an overextended car chase through Los Angeles.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Waist Deep is a cynical excuse for the writer and director (and talented actor) Vondie Curtis-Hall to sock some money away for the kids' college tuition. It's as if he watched "Get Rich or Die Tryin' " and thought, "It needs more palm trees."
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Peter Debruge
With an exciting way out, the audience would have gladly overlooked all the loose ends from earlier in the movie. But the way Hall plays it, he undermines the early style and intelligence of his all-black action movie, taking audiences for the wrong kind of ride in the end.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Bill Gallo
For its ever shifting attitudes toward men, women, and murder, Waist Deep is one of the sloppiest movies ever to reach the screen.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Steve Davis
The lengths to which a parent will go to save a child can be gut-wrenching stuff, but Waist Deep rarely hits you in the pit of your stomach. Blame it on the lame screenplay, which unwisely (and badly) gravitates more toward the crime-spree elements of "Bonnie and Clyde" than the fierce parental instincts of, say, "Kramer vs. Kramer" or "Lorenzo's Oil."
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Like the forgotten blaxploitation schlock it often resembles, the film aspires to nothing but cheap thrills, but while it's plenty cheap, it's far from thrilling.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
The cast, especially The Game, does a fairly good job with this meager material, but it's like trying to make chateaubriand out of Spam.
Read Full Review >Premiere Monica A. Reyhani
To be fair Deep does have one thing going for it. While the movie never seems to end, and when it does… oh man. Think "Aquaman" meets "Training Day." It proves that sometimes a crappy drama is sometimes just a comedy in disguise.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Slow-witted and occasionally unintentionally hilarious.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
It's about as much fun for the viewer as being dropped into a virtual-reality version of a highway-safety crash film. Hall writes and directs with the finesse of a rusty hatchet.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Director Vondie Curtis-Hall has managed to top (or should I say "bottom"?) his last theatrical release, Mariah Carey's "Glitter," with a movie that offers not one praiseworthy moment: not a scene, not a performance, not a technical achievement, not even a line of dialogue.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 11 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Theresa B. gave it a10:
I really enjoy this film. Tyrese and Megan Good gave a good performance and the action kept me interested throughout the movie.
Princess Young gave it a10:
I think this was the best movie I seen in a long time. I had to go by it on DVD.
Lee R. gave it a7:
Curtis Hall surprised me with this one. In a time when recycled crap like Little Miss Sunshine and Garden State are ruling the world of film, it's refreshing to walk into something like Waist Deep and be reminded of just how good films used to be.
Kourtney T. gave it an8:
Waist Deep is definitely one of the best films of the summer. It had all the elements that a movie should have. Meagan Good gave an outstanding performance as a lead actress. I definitely recommend this movie as a must see hit!
Abraham W. gave it an8:
i thoroughly enjoyed the film....the pacing was excellent as was the acting of the two leads ....it kept me on the edge of my seat.
