“NEXT DAY AIR”

Mike:	Fasten your seats belts, you’re in for a profane ride. At the helm behind the camera is Benny Boom, whose previous directorial work has been in rapper music videos, the result is a herky-jerky festival of F-bombs and random, gratuititous violence wrapped around a script that could hardly have actually been written down. This had to have been created on the fly with only an outline as its compass.
Melody:	And when you break it all down, Mike this huge waste of time and money is simply boring. It all begins in L.A. or Mexico, it’s hard to tell where they are as they seem to be all one of late. Either way, it features a drug lord named Bodega Diablo (Emilio Rivera), whose name, as far as I can tell, is loosely translated “Grocery store Devil.” Does that sound about right? Bodega has ‘next day aired’ ten kilos of cocaine to Philadelphia. But, in Philly, things go awry when the dope-smoking UPS-like delivery guy, Leo (Donald Faison) delivers it to the wrong address.
Mike:	Instead of the package going to the idiot Puerto Rican couple Jesus and Chita (Cisco Reyes and Yasmin Deliz), Leo drops it at the apartment across the hall where the idiot small-time hoods Guch and Brody (Wood Harris and Mike Epps) take delivery.
Melody:	When they realize what they have, visions of sugar plums, or Bolivian Marching Powder dance in their heads. Brody has a cousin, Shavoo (Omari Hardwick) who can take the stuff off their hands for a tidy profit!
Mike:	Jesus and Chita are still waiting for the package to arrive, and Grocery Devil is getting impatient back in Mexico, or California.
Melody:	In the meantime, Leo, who is oblivious to his mistake, continues to smoke up and hit on women while slowly cruising down the street in his delivery truck. Oh, and for some reason they put a delivery guy counterpart in the movie in the form of Eric (Mos Def) who encourages Leo to do as he does and cut open the packages and steal whatever valuables are inside. Now, even though Mos Def is about the only thing redeemable about this sorry excuse for cinema, his character has absolutely no point for being in the film, other than to provide a stage for Mos Def in a few scenes.
Mike:	Shavoo goes to retrieve the money to buy the illgotten cocaine from Guch and Brody, but when he realizes he’s been ripped off, he goes on a mindless rampage to get his stuff back. Again, it was like another scene that acted as vapid filler.
Melody:	Diablo and his henchman decide they have to fix things themselves, and fly to Philly.
Mike:	Diablo, his goon, Jesus, and Chita all go in search of Leo on his delivery route. Can you imagine the luck? They find him in about five minutes.
Melody:	After pummeling him into submission, they all decide to retrace Leo’s steps. It leads back to the apartment where Guch, Brody, Shavoo, and his running partner thug are making the deal, complete with a gym bag full of cash and a lot of automatic weapons.
Mike:	The grand conflagration takes place when Leo and “friends” knock on the door.
Melody:	Talk about your Blaxploitation throwback! This should have been made for DVD use only. What moviegoer demographic are they hoping will seek this out? I realize we should review movies on their merit and not their run time (this one is only 84 minutes of excruciating pain), but this has no merit, no dignity, no humor, and no possible redeeming quality to move you to waste your time watching it.
Mike:	That about sums it up, Melody.
Melody:	Half star.
Mike:	*

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