'Waist Deep' has energy and ridiculous moments
This isn't the movie to look to for a parental role model.
By CHRIS HEWITT
ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS
What is a kid like the one in "Waist Deep" to do when his father dumps him with two separate ex-cons, leads him into the middle of a pair of shootouts, drives him at high speeds without using any hands and practically gives him a loaded gun? There just isn't a Father's Day card that says, "Thanks for all the felonies, Dad."
The dad in "Waist Deep" (played by Tyrese Gibson) isn't going to win Father of the Year anytime soon, especially after the nonsensical scene in which, hot on the tail of his kidnapped son (H. Hunter Hall, who looks like a miniversion of Outkast's Andre Benjamin), he says to a gorgeous hooker who's helping him out, "There's so many things I could be doing to find my son." Only to immediately hop with her into a bed, one of the few places he knows his son isn't.
There are ridiculous moments in "Waist Deep" (the ending, a fairy-tale coda to a relentlessly grim tale, is laugh-out-loud funny). But it's also an extremely handsome film that has been made with style and energy.
Those shootouts have a shocking immediacy, for instance, even if they are the 415th and 416th movie shootouts you've seen, and the actors -- especially Meagan Good as that brassy, gorgeous hooker -- bring verve to their roles, even if none of them manages to project "responsible parent."