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'Gridlock'd': Surprisingly Footloose

When it comes to "Gridlock'd," first impressions will trip you up. Before seeing this movie, which stars Tim Roth and the late Tupac Shakur, you couldn't be blamed for assuming it's just another business-as-usual, interracial, cop-buddy picture.

Why else would you have this two-tone teaming? Roth's the uptight officer, you figure, who just lost his (probably white) partner. Shakur's the jive talker he's forced to work with. They're thrown into an intense murder case -- something involving drugs, gun-running or a serial killer. After the inevitable racial clashing ("Don't you honkies know anything?" etc.), they turn into a beautiful dream team, just in time for the sequel.

Luckily, none of this is true. (And more tragically, Shakur, who was killed by gunfire last September, won't be around for any movie.) In this hard-edged seriocomedy, written and directed by Vondie Curtis Hall, expectations are wonderfully shattered.

For starters, Stretch (Roth) and Spoon (Shakur) aren't cops. They're no-rent Detroit musicians -- and junkies -- who play in a trippy-jazzy trio with chanteuse Cookie (Thandie Newton). One New Year's Eve, Cookie falls into a coma after dabbling with the white stuff. Stretch and Spoon rush her to the emergency room, only to be stalled by bureaucracy.

While Cookie hovers on the edge of death, Spoon is obliged to fill out an endless, baffling questionnaire. How's he supposed to know her Social Security number? Finally, Cookie's rushed into an operating room. Stretch and Spoon have no choice but to wait. And wait.

Spoon makes an immediate New Year's resolution to kick his habit. After all, he tells Stretch, the thrill is gone. He only uses heroin to keep from undergoing nasty withdrawal. But his upbeat intentions -- and here's the running joke of the movie -- are consistently thwarted. Without a Medicaid card, he discovers, he can't get treatment; and his attempts to get one are blocked by a legion of cynical, unfeeling case workers and government clerks.

There are other problems. Spoon feels duty-bound to Stretch, who stops at nothing for a buzz and has a nose for trouble. When Stretch pockets a stash from a dead drug dealer, he gets them both into hot water with D Reper (Curtis Hall), a shady character who wants those narcotics back. It doesn't help that Spoon just ripped off D Reper by selling him an empty video camera box full of bricks.

It gets worse: Spoon and Stretch suddenly find themselves wanted as possible suspects in a gruesome murder case. With trouble like this, who needs a cure?

In his debut, Curtis Hall has an impressively simplistic style. Apart from some stylistic touches (the story's punctuated frequently by white flashes to indicate flashbacks), he lets the scenes play on their own. Shakur and Roth, who seem born for these roles, are allowed to take charge -- and have fun doing it. When Spoon decides the only way to get treatment is via the emergency room, he asks Stretch to slash him with a penknife. But the problem is, where do you stab without killing someone? Somewhere "between the organs," Stretch concludes.

Shakur's real circumstances overshadow the story at times with an eerie fatalism. "I don't want to go out like that, man," he says, as he contemplates drug-related death. But more often, "Gridlock'd" makes you look at him fondly. It's naive to think the slain rapper would have straightened out his act in real life, but there's no doubt that he had great potential as an actor. And if he had to choose a movie for his final appearance, he could have done a lot worse than this.

GRIDLOCK'D (R) — Contains sexual situations, nudity, profanity and violence.