The Gates

Friends is very important to have in life, and i don´t mean you have to have many. If you just have a best friend that´s fantastic as well. To be able to do different things with a friend, or several, as long as you enjoy the company and like the personality. I usually look at it this way, i rather have some friends only than many, because these friends accept me for who i really am. You can of course have other types of friendship, such as between brothers or sisters. Let´s speak about the friendship between brothers for a while and focus on one specific film from 2001. In the psychological thriller Joy Ride from director John Dahl ( director of the 1998 classic film Rounders with Matt Damon ), we meet a man named Lewis ( Paul Walker ), who is going on a road trip with his brother Fuller ( Steve Zahn ), and Lewis female friend Venna ( Leelee Sobieski ). Fuller has a CB radio installed in Lews car and the two begin listening in on trucker´s chatter.  Fuller coaxes Lewis into playing a prank on a truck driver nicknamed Rusty Nail ( Matthew Kimbrough ), asking him to pretend to be a woman named Candy Cane. They set up a meeting with Rusty Nail in a motel, what started as a prank will soon turn into a pure nightmare. Joy Ride is a really effective road thriller with great acting performances, and the film looks good as well. The thriller influences match very well with the story, and even if the story is nothing unique i feel that it is told powerful enough. This is actually my personal favourite Paul Walker film and i think his screen prescence with Steve Zahn works well. By the way, this film have a great soundtrack from the early 2000´s that match the look of this film. If you love road thrillers then you should definetely check out Joy Ride on streaming or physical media. Since i mentioned friendship early in this review, i checked out the thriller The Gates from director John Burr on VOD. A thriller about 3 young male friends, who end up having a truly awful night. The trailer looked interesting and the movie poster is simple but effective. Is this a thriler you should check out this late summer, or is The Gates not worth spending your precious time on?

3 young men, Derek ( Mason Gooding ), Kevin ( Algee Smith ) and Tyon ( Keith Powers ) have all be invited to a house party with several hot women, all waiting for the men to show up. They take a detour and end up in a community they have never heard of. At first this seems to be an ordinary neighborhood, until they witness a possible murder and put themselves in a lot of trouble....

While i was watching The Gates i was reminded of the 2017 psychological horror film Get Out, directed Jordan Peele. If you have seen that movie you might remember it tells the story about a society where black people are seen as trash basically, where you can tell there are several rascist minds within this society. The Gates does something similar where we see a neighborhood built basically to keep black people away, especially to make sure they don´t have any crimes commited by a black person. Hearing that you would think that´s insane, but there are actually communities out there like this in America still today. You would think that we have developed more as human beings and see humans as equals, unfortunately we are not that far. The Gates is basically a traditional thriller where 3 men witness a possible murder, and pretty much get the blame for it because they are black. The plot is not original in any way, or take any unexpected turns. But what this film manage to do is work as a thriller regarding racism, as well as showing how a society can fall when the wrong people should not be the leader of this community. The acting in general is actually pretty good, but the 3 main actors Mason Gooding, Algee Smith and Keith Powers all pull off realistic performances, being victims of racism. I also enjoy the performance of actor Brad Leland ( who i remember from the TV series Friday Night Lives ), as the character Christopher, and of course i have to mention actor James Van De Beek as the psychotic Pastor Jacob, a really fun performance. I appreciate that The Gates try to show us a realistic view in how a racist society could look like, so we see how horrible people can be just because someone´s color of their skin. The thriller aspects are good and i like the portait of these civilians living in society, who don´t want to live in reality. One scene i felt was silly was a recording of a rap song, comes out of nowhere and doesn´t really feel like this scene belong in this film. I understand the message of the scene, it just didn´t do anything for me personally. Overall i like The Gates, and i feel that director John Burr manage to tell a simple, yet effective thriller story. One thing is for sure, i will be careful visiting the wrong church after watching The Gates.

Rating: DDD