What are we to make of director Patrick Jerome's somewhat homemade urban gangster flick 'Holla at me'? We could wonder what in the hell is the title supposed to mean, leaving us to suppose that all the decent urban catch phrases for movies have been taken up already. Perhaps 'We Just Chillin', 'That shit is Krunk' or 'Yo Dog, you trippin' for real' just didn't do the trick. Personally I would have gone with 'Blastin' Sucka Foolz' but then that's just me.

Joe (Ty Price), Tommy (Constantine Taylor) and Tyrone (Miguel Lopes) are a trio of high dollar hitmen. So close are these three dudes they consider themselves brothers from different mothers since they’ve been together since they were in their little hitmen diapers. They are working for an exclusive organization who likes to keep things low key, so they have their assassination meeting in what looks like one of the producers aunties house. Tommy and Tyrone are sitting in their Benzo outside a marks house awaiting Joe to hurry up and kill the dude and all goes well when they hear the gunshot, but they immediately get concerned when that gunshot is followed by a hail of gunfire. With guns drawn the two young men rush to their brothers aid who is fleeing the house, informing the pair that armed gunmen are in the house. Tommy and Tyrone walk into the house only to see no one, wondering what the hell is up with Joe. If they knew what I knew they would have flat blasted Joe’s ass the minute he walked out of the house.

Joe’s hallucinations just get greater and greater leading Tommy to take him to a psychologist, Tony Soprano style, to help him get through his issues. This isn’t helping him so much as Joe starts to do things which quite honestly aren’t very brotherly, unless your brother happens to be named Cain. We can safely assume that Joe is totally off his rocker when a calmer version of Joe starts appearing attempting to cure him off his ills, and truth be told he’s doing a pretty crappy job of it because Joe has obviously lost his mind. Then just like Joe, our story veers wildly out of control with a number of crazy twists and wacky conclusions that may leave you wondering what the hell you just saw.

Now if I’m to grade ‘Holla at Me’ on a curve, comparing it to other homemade urban gangster flicks I’ve seen then it would get a solid B plus. If I were to rate ‘Holla at Me’ on how it stands against any old regular movie, then it would still pass, but with a D minus. One of the good things about ‘Holla at Me’ is the semi-refined look of the film print. Though I’m fairly certain they shot this film on some kind of HDV or mini DV format it still looked a cut above most of the similarly shot films shot on these mediums. Director Patrick Jerome who also served as editor and writer on this film is probably the cinematographer as well and his scenes are well let and he also uses some very decent dramatic camera movement that you rarely see in films of this type. There also a little plane, and not being airplane literate I don’t if it was Cessna or something, but this thing did have a little private Jet in it.

Some technical issues and the overall acting is what ultimately sinks ‘Holla at Me’ along the morass of other urban flicks. Lead Ty Price does a good job with his role as his IMDB resume will show that he’s been doing quite a bit of work for quite a time, but he does overact here and there. It may be that he needed to overact to make for the total lack of acting ability for the rest of the cast. A lot of the dudes in this thing certainly had ‘the look’ of the characters they were playing which admittedly is half the battle, but the other half is being able to convincingly recite your lines which unfortunately they fall short in. You will notice various professional actors who you’ve probably seen in this or that mainstream mob movie who do raise the level of this film a bit but not enough. I do hope that actress Ilca Andrade takes an acting class or two because I REALLY want to see her in more stuff. I mean this woman, aside from being beautiful, has a body that would bring a tear to the eye of Pope John Paul I. Yeah, I know he’s dead but that’s how rockin’ this woman’s figure is.

The narrative starts out well enough but eventually veers wildly out of control and goes on for way too long. It is a general rule of thumb that a director should NEVER edit his own film because invariably he or she will not cut something that an unbiased editor would surely have left on the cutting room floor, and ‘Holla at Me’ is a classic example of this. Particularly considering Mr. Jerome wrote this thing as well so nuttin’ was getting cut, and this is a film that probably would have been considerably improved with about fifteen minutes or so shaved off.

Patrick Jerome has some promise as a director and this is listed as his first film and as such it’s not that bad a film, but it's not a good one either. Given the numerous opportunities given to directors of films far worse than this one, I fully expect Mr. Jerome’s next film to be considerably better than his previous one.

NOTE: I included two box covers. One that I assume the filmmakers created and one that distributor made. I see why distributors do what they do and I’ll leave you to guess who made which cover.