Where it all went wrong *spoilers*
Where do i start with this film.
It had a good concept, i liked how it went for a bit of a Drive style look at polar opposite racism within police units and showing how newbies can be coerced not just into corruption but also racist views from their role model senior partners and it also showed direct and indirect racism.
Where this film went wrong was the casting of 50 cent. Similarly to 'Man with the Iron Fist' in which RZA cast himself as the lead, 50 cent just really fell short here, he's a C grade actor at best and despite each scene being carried by better actors than him, he was a rather large stain on a Picasso that can now be chucked in the trash.
Again similar to RZA where he single handedly assassinated his own movie Man with the Iron Fist, 50 cent let this one down with his inability to show expression. His delivery was about 60% confident, which is actually more than i would expect from him but still made the movie look like a school play rather than a hollywood product. Maybe 50 cent looked at stars like Vin Diesel, Mark Walburg or the Rock and thought that acting looks quite easy to do, well one thing he might not know is that these actors have genuine charisma in their everyday persona's which is why their scenes pan out the way they do, 50 cent however does not and this movie really shun the spotlight on a very insecure actor and an even more insecure person in my opinion, his eyes glowed with fear the entire movie.
While 50 cent must have spent his time only remembering his lines, he should have taken some time to look at his character. His character is a man who watched his father killed, who has freshly done time in jail, who managed to convince the D/A to allow him to become a police officer and he has just graduated. This leaves us in the first scene and really this is an actors bread and butter, it makes for a very interesting character. The actor could display signs of nostalgic anguish for his father, regret for his father and time in jail, maybe animosity for being put in jail, overwhelming relief for getting out of jail and getting a new chance, display some hardened fortitude for having lead a hard life and having done hard jail time.
These are all the things a good actor could play with, instead, 50 cent plays his first scene as if he is a straight A kid from the burbs who is just graduating from Harvard. He looks completely innocent, fragile and bland, not because he's acting that way, but because his rapper persona has been stripped away and what we are seeing is the real Curtis James Jackson III reading lines.
50 cent needed to convince the audience A) that he had it rough, B) that he was intelligent, impressionable and had enough charm and charisma to have previously wooed Dana Delany's character from the district attorneys office that he, fresh out of the pen, could enlist in the police force (which would be nearly impossible) and C) that he was hard enough and intelligent enough for Robert De Niro's character to have been watching his mannerisms whilst from the corner of the room to want to recruit him for more than just being his fathers son.
50 cent did none of these, the time when he wasn't speaking dialogue, he spent absent and expressionless when in these moment, a picture speaks a thousand words and are probably more important than the dialogue, as demonstrated by forest whitakers character when first introduced.
For a gangbanger, you'd at least think 50 cent could hold a gun with confidence, his so called heartfelt negotiation with the youth was actually laughable. A few rappers can act, Common, Ice Cube, Xzibit, Dr Dre even Eminem. 50 cent however is as far down from the list as you can get. 50 cent struggles to get a solid 3 minute music video to look like he has confidence, let alone a full length movie, don't quit your day job, stick to music and crappy Beats by Dre ripoffs.