Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I’ve seen worse folks.  I know that’s not a ringing endorsement of the new joint from Code Black Entertainment, but in a weekend in which I saw Code Black’s own ‘4-Life’ which was simply putrid, and another independent lo-bud production calling itself ‘Machine’ which was so bad it almost made me want to stop living, ‘The Hit’ at least has some things going for it.  First of all it was competently shot by director Ryan Combs, it was reasonably well acted, led by Blair Underwood who unfortunately can’t completely shake the pretty boy gloss to completely sell us on the fact that he’s a hardened rap mogul, and Combs also made the wise decision not to cast any actress who wasn’t in possession of absolute gorgeousness.  Very wise decision indeed Mister Director.  Oh, and it also had Al B. Sure in it.  Al B. Sure has been located!

The film starts being narrated by heaven knows who as we meet our main character Hen (Underwood) who is in a meeting with brutal mob boss Santucci (James Russo),  but that’s getting ahead as we track back to how we got to this point, and thus the films biggest flaw which is the extremely jumbled and overly confusing narrative.  Hen is the hardened owner of Iron Head records and has this grand plan to unite all of the owners of the sub hip hop labels into one grand label and stop sifting away the large portion of their profits to the majors which control them.  On the sub plot side we have up and coming young rapper Sirus (DeRay Davis) who is madly in love with pretty medical student Day (Daya Vaidya) who is also dating another up and coming hip hopper by the name of Angelo (Erick Nathan).  But don’t think that Day is some kind of ho because she hasn’t slept with either of these rappers yet as she is simply trying to decide which one she loves.

But back to the main, Hen’s plan is nice and all but nobody is just going stand around and let millions walk out the door uncontested and the big time major record label owner Rowlands (Michael Liberty) decides to start putting pressure on Hen and his

crew to rethink their transgressions.  This also brings us back to the Santucci character who aligns himself briefly with Hen because it seems Hen unwittingly conned some money from a dude who was conning money from Santucci, money Hen used to start Iron Head records.  Now as far as Al B. Sure is concerned, I’m overjoyed the brother is alive but his role served very little purpose as he was there to threaten some muscle bound con and then get leaned on by this same con a little later, but neither scene had very little bearing on the story itself.  Ultimately this all comes down to whether or not Hen can keep it all together in the face of overwhelming odds to become the super rap producer he’s always dreamed, and eventually go out of business due to rampant internet downloads.

Let me be honest with you now because ‘The Hit’ isn’t all that good a movie.  It has a narrative which jumps all over the place, introduces characters and situations that oft times make very little sense and are sometimes completely forgotten.  There are mob bosses, mob hits, crooked politicians, dirty uncles, a krazy fight scene at the end and it certainly could have benefited from a few less sub-plots and maybe trimmed a few characters, but if trimming characters meant trimming hotties, the forget that noise.  It’s also a  shame when being too handsome works against you (a heavy cross for those like us isn’t Blair?) but Mr. Underwood, despite his fine acting pedigree doesn’t completely sell the whole ‘Straight out of Compton’ thing, but he still is a competent lead none the less.  Now recognizing that ‘The Hit’ isn’t all that good, what it does have in its favor works wonderfully, and that would be its rather large collection of supreme hotties.

Sure Nicky Norris isn’t given a heck of a lot to do as Hen’s assistant Johnnie, but MY GOD is she beautiful.  She and Blair have this ‘love scene’ which had me thinking we may be getting a nudity moment, but unless you classify nudity as a glimpse of a knee, the bottom of her foot and the back of a shoulder then sadly there was no nudity to be had.  There was nudity in the film, just not from anyone I wanted to see naked.  Also actress Sharon Swainson playing Rap Empress Ms. Mocha, supremely hot as well, has a set of power nipples that I’m thinking would pop through a medieval breast plate.  IMPRESSIVE!  Yes, there are more hotties that deserve discussion but heaven forbid I come off as shallow and narrow of focus.  One more note, Aaron J. Patton in the small role of Rap Mogul D Love is a very good actor and one day given the right part DeRay Davis will run the world.

Again, I’ve seen way worst than this.  If you can muddle through the overly confusing dialog and don’t mind the sight of insanely beautiful women, and you’ve been a fan of Blair Underwood since ‘Krush Groove’ then here you go.  Get busy with it.

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