Fly by Night (1992), 5

R | 1h 33min | Drama , Music | 2 November 1992
Rich is a naive wanna be rapper who gets the opportunity of a life-time when he get the chance to join I in his rap-group, the only problem is that I is a hardcore rapper who lives the words of his raps while he merely is out to entertain.
Director: Steve Gomer
Stars: Jeffrey D. Sams, Ron Brice, David Adami.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106934/
Watched online, ok print.

No songs listed in the Soundtracks, but plenty performed onscreen.

My problem: I wouldn't know good rap from bad rap. It all sounds the same to me (as does most country music).

Rated 4.6 by 166 IMDb voters. Yet of the 6 reviews, 4 of them give this 7 or higher, and another gives seemingly positive words without a number rating; the 6th is a 1, claiming this is unintentionally hilarious. I don't see anything to laugh at here.

The thing I found unlikely was that the hardcore rapper, "I" (the pronoun), took on the college-dropout rhymester "King" as a partner, allowed the act to be called King and I (did he get the reference?), and then they performed I's hardcore lyrics. Those are a cautionary message that I is a sociopath, "not human"..."don't see your face". And, as the synopsis says, he lives the words and dies by the words. (I lost count: were there 2, 3 or more bodies created here? Fortunately, they didn't spend a lot of $$ on the technology to show us upclose wounds being inflicted.)

The better message was spoken by I in conversations with King. After a seemingly successful meeting with a potential manager/record producer, I cautions his partners (the 3rd guy scratches?) that $$ is not the issue, respect is the issue. They can write a contract that claims to pay them, but then disrespect may cause the $$ to never arrive. Later, he again emphasizes respect, analogizing that if they got a ton of money, then it would turn out to be accepted in society would require cat sh!t, and "they won't sell us no cats".

Unfortunately, I's idea of respect is "earned" with the threat/act of violence, just like gangsters in Scorsese or 30s Warner films. I guess if you don't believe you can achieve within a system, you make your own, and you want it quick, because the future is part of the system you don't believe in.

So it's not that I didn't get anything from the film. It's just that I'm pretty sure that I really didn't want it.

My rating is based on the fact that I don't want to see this again, and might rather not have seen it at all.

indie, dir. Gomer; 5