![]() He captures the unstable nature of the drug market flooded with cocaine in the '80s. He exploits rap video clichés (babes and raining money for example) as ironic metaphorical imagery and puts the picture's excellent old-school hip-hop soundtrack to good illustrative use. But director Charles Stone III (the man behind the "Whassup!" Budweiser ads) largely makes up for it with his otherwise capable command of both the cinematic language and the heart of the story. The balance of the movie is a flashback, which is a tired narrative technique. ![]() But being the top dog makes the once-invisible Ace a target for ambitious rivals, and within the first 10 minutes he's ambushed, badly beaten and shot. The fresh-from-jail Mitch is his lieutenant, and his biggest problem is a loose-cannon enforcer named Rico ( Cam'ron) who draws unwanted attention, flashing his cash and guns around. The film opens with a scene one year later, when he's "running the neighborhood" but is still easy-going and keeping a low profile. What we know from the get-go, however, is that Ace meets an ugly - if not deadly - fate. Ace succumbs, in small increments, to the enticements of what seems like an effortless road to living well. ![]() People like Ace ( Wood Harris), a reticent clerk at a neighborhood dry cleaners who has always been happy to blend into the woodwork and just be a survivor, even as he sees his closest friends becoming flush with cash, clothes and cool cars."That ain't my flow, man," Ace says when his best friend Mitch ( Mekhi Phifer) tries to lure him into his small-time drug empire.īut as temptations mount (a local Colombian cartel middleman leaves him a cocaine "tip" in a jacket pocket at the cleaners), power becomes attractive (he'd like to get his sister away from her pimp-dealer boyfriend) and opportunities present themselves (Mitch gets arrested, leaving his street business up for grabs). "Paid" plays as if it were made by people who lived it. But it's a story told so well - with veracity, raw compassion, well-drawn characters and strong performances - that its common cautionary tale feels as compelling as it might have been in the 1980s, when the film takes place and before this type of movie became its own genre. The familiar story told in "Paid In Full," the story of a good ghetto kid seduced into the drug trade with tragic results, covers no new territory. ![]()
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