Bosco
Starring Aubrey Joseph, Nikki Blonsky, D.C. Young Fly, John Lewis, Theo Rossi, Thomas Jane, Tyrese Gibson, Vivica A. Fox.
Directed by Nicholas Manuel Pino
Rating: *
Prison dramas follow a certain pattern .They will have the hero being bullied and tortured by other inmates as well as the guards. The incarcerated hero, most of the time not guilty, would make friends with a sympathetic inmate ,etc.There would be an escape attempt, etc etc.
Bosco is different in spite of adhering to some of the above trope. For one, the incarcerated hero Quawnta(Aubrey Joseph) is not wrongly incarcerated. He is guilty and he is sort of repentant. Although he does not admit to having a choice.The plot doesn’t allow us to get close enough to Quawnta, a.k.a Bosco to feel entirely empathetic.
Throughout the film we hear his voiceover trying to tell us how much he is suffering in prison. But we get the feeling that the punishment is not all unearned.
The nature of Bosco’s crime is not discussed explicitly; from the flashbacks into his childhood we can make out that he was led into a world of crime by his unscrupulous father(Tyrese Gibson). This process of emotional extradition is well-defined in the narrative.
The entire film is shot in shades of green, creating a mood of molting melancholy, almost like an overclouded sky which never really gets down to raining.
Pain is seen to be a constant in Bosco’s life , and the actor chosen to play Bosco, Aubrey Joseph is so brilliant that I was compelled to wonder if he actually comes from a troubled past. For an actor so young to understand pain so intimately is no small achievement.
The small-budgeted film benefits immensely from avoiding scenes of prolonged violence against Bosco. There is one explicit sequence of violence where a prison guard kicks Bosco down for no reason except to show his brute force. It’s not so much about being Black as being defiant.
Tragically, there is no silver lining for Bosco’s suffering. He has no past, no future, and a present very very tense. His wife has left him. And he has a baby boy who,he is taunted in prison, will probably be a criminal like Bosco’s father and Bosco.
Some would say that this is stereotyping a ghetto-level Back man’s life. Sadly some of the most painful cliches in cinema are ripped straight out of life.
The only time I saw Bosco smiling in this film was when he gets a rare visitor in prison. She is a foxy friend named Tammy( Nikki Blonsky) who talks about dressing up for parties and having fun.
Damn, what Bosco wouldn’t give to party with Tammy.That sense of a normal life being a fugitive, haunts this film about the absence of true freedom.
