Rampage tells the story of three brothers. One dies. Another’s in Iraq. The third, whom the film finally concentrates on, goes looking for a recording contract.
All three brothers are rappers. The film is created around the notion that it’s as dangerous to live on the wrong side of the tracks in Miami as it is to live in Baghdad. Whilst shootings are clearly rife in Dade County, it still seems to be pushing it to say it’s worse than Iraq. A soldier says at one point that he’s safer in Baghdad, which may be the case for a US soldier but not, in would seem, for many. However, the film seems to realise that the comparison is tenuous if not odious, and the focus shifts away from the elder brother in Baghdad after the middle brother Marcus is shot in a gang incident at a party.
As the director/ narrator says, the younger 14 year old brother speaks like Shakespeare. Rap, rhyme, words, are part of all the brothers’ metabolisms. The younger brother says he started rapping when he was five. The violence that thrives around them seems to fuel their literacy. The rappers write down lyrics, have debates in rap, are more than ready to spontaneously rap about anything, anywhere.
Maybe the violence of their environment fuels this, maybe not. It’s a telling moment when the head of ‘Sony Rap’ or whatever he is, tells the kid that he’s the future of Rap, but that he can’t sing about what he wants to. He needs to become more audience friendly. Parents don’t want their children listening to a 14 year old rapping about AK 47s. You sense that if you try to stop the kid singing about what he has to sing about, he’ll never become the future of Rap. And what he knows about is shootings and drive-bys and his brother being killed.
In the end Rampage seems to skirt around issues. It won’t criticise the suits who tell the younger brother to change his tune. It doesn’t comment on fellow members of the soldier’s ghetto who criticise him for fighting Bush’s war. The film makes the strange choice of flying two of the brothers to Australia for no particular reason. The only time Gittoes comes out with a take on what he is doing as a filmmaker is when he leaves an Australian radio journalist’s query about his actions in the film, replying with an acknowledgement that the media interest he brought to the family might have precipitated Marcus’ killing. There’s probably another movie to be made about the macho documentary maker’s relationship to his subject matter, but we don’t get that here. What we do get is a snapshot of a remarkable community, which oozes poetry like blood; whose children are as proud of the epithet ‘poet’ as they are of being warriors.
It’s the people on the wrong side of the Miami bridge who truly treasure the language we speak.
All three brothers are rappers. The film is created around the notion that it’s as dangerous to live on the wrong side of the tracks in Miami as it is to live in Baghdad. Whilst shootings are clearly rife in Dade County, it still seems to be pushing it to say it’s worse than Iraq. A soldier says at one point that he’s safer in Baghdad, which may be the case for a US soldier but not, in would seem, for many. However, the film seems to realise that the comparison is tenuous if not odious, and the focus shifts away from the elder brother in Baghdad after the middle brother Marcus is shot in a gang incident at a party.
As the director/ narrator says, the younger 14 year old brother speaks like Shakespeare. Rap, rhyme, words, are part of all the brothers’ metabolisms. The younger brother says he started rapping when he was five. The violence that thrives around them seems to fuel their literacy. The rappers write down lyrics, have debates in rap, are more than ready to spontaneously rap about anything, anywhere.
Maybe the violence of their environment fuels this, maybe not. It’s a telling moment when the head of ‘Sony Rap’ or whatever he is, tells the kid that he’s the future of Rap, but that he can’t sing about what he wants to. He needs to become more audience friendly. Parents don’t want their children listening to a 14 year old rapping about AK 47s. You sense that if you try to stop the kid singing about what he has to sing about, he’ll never become the future of Rap. And what he knows about is shootings and drive-bys and his brother being killed.
In the end Rampage seems to skirt around issues. It won’t criticise the suits who tell the younger brother to change his tune. It doesn’t comment on fellow members of the soldier’s ghetto who criticise him for fighting Bush’s war. The film makes the strange choice of flying two of the brothers to Australia for no particular reason. The only time Gittoes comes out with a take on what he is doing as a filmmaker is when he leaves an Australian radio journalist’s query about his actions in the film, replying with an acknowledgement that the media interest he brought to the family might have precipitated Marcus’ killing. There’s probably another movie to be made about the macho documentary maker’s relationship to his subject matter, but we don’t get that here. What we do get is a snapshot of a remarkable community, which oozes poetry like blood; whose children are as proud of the epithet ‘poet’ as they are of being warriors.
It’s the people on the wrong side of the Miami bridge who truly treasure the language we speak.
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