The Stix
The Stix
In his short assemblage, Jaron Lockridge provides a summary of “The Stix,” which deals with a little known region of West Tennessee and examines the intersection of drugs and crimes and the law.
This independent film depicts the efforts by a drugs investigation room to apprehend Martell Jenkins, played by Darnail Lanton, who is head of organized crime with personal tensions within his syndicate.
For Martell, things start to boil downhill even before they are on board. Random hits on his stash houses are hurting him hard, and trust from his team he knows he simply cannot afford. At the same time, every rotten apple has also to contend with every other one, every other pressure, in this case, that of the sheriff’s office narcotics as well.
From the outset, we encounter Lt. Detective “LT” Chew (Jeff Haltom), SGT Eric Greer (Everett Anderson) Officer Hamilton (John Dylan Atkins) Nicole Harris (Nichole Tate-Jackson) and many more as they close on Martell.
To begin with, the characterization of the characters with regard to their backgrounds is one of the highest points of this movie. Unlike the role of a cop or a criminal, each player is introduced in familiar surroundings as having some underlying problems that they are trying to overcome.
For instance: Harris is a breadwinner and a single parent. She is eventually stressed out to the extent that her children are taken away from her by Child Protective Services, because, after work, she comes home too tired to be a mother.
Another character that goes deep into personal matters is Sgt. Eric Greer, who despite being in a crumbling relationship remains committed, such personal character arcs give context as to why they do what they do.
When all is said and done, that was some pretty good acting for an independent movie like “The Stix.” The leads were able to imprint such emotions into the characters who made the dialogue sound like it was for real and the characters were interesting enough to the audience; there was Darnail Lanton as Martell Jenkins, playing a drug lord, whom you would expect to have all the jitteriness and worrying behavior of a man constantly being hunted down. However, some of the supporting cast did show their amateurism here and there which tended to break me out of the immersion of what should have been more dramatic moments.
The one thing about this movie that I really can’t give any leeway on is how slow it is. Seriously, the pacing was just brutal; a few scenes went on for so long because of the dialogue that I found myself reaching for my phone wanting to check my notifications for some relief.
It’s only two hours, but what I am saying is considering the whodunit what it is? Nah. Backstories are cool and all in building up the context and such but there are times they become overbearing – taking away far too much time than necessary in the actual story – which in this case is a crime thriller of urgency.
Nonetheless, Lockridge is competent enough with the direction of “The Stix” Daniel to praise. Speaking of the visual part, the film looks nice; there were some quite good locations found as well as there was notice of trying to build a specific color scheme – which elevated its level to that of a low-budget indie black hood film, which one usually expects to see sitting on Tubi, rather than streaming through ordinary.
At this point in the story, however, revenge and betrayal become the main themes against a backdrop of building unrest in Martell’s unit and in the investigating team tightening around them from all sides. The cinematographic elements are carried out rather well in this case; they do provide some depth — but again: slow pace is kind of an hurting when you are attempting to add multiple layers of conflict in tight spaces like this one.
The Stix is a film that is reasonable and not unpleasant to spend time with. It is primarily about crimes and enforcement in rural areas, where the two usually intersect. All throughout the fictional work there are fine characters that one can imagine are present in the film and the main cast reasonably does the acting. It’s an okay movie, it’s just that it should never have been so slow or contained so many cheesy supporting actors.
That is the other reason why I allot this movie 5 out of 10 points; for while it wasn’t overly entertaining, I still wanted to continue on – which speaks volumes for its ability to engender sympathy with the audience. For those of you who like slow burning small towns with a strong lead performance but hollow support on the other hand, then ‘The Stix’ may just be the one for you. In general, it succeeds in attempting not to be one of those low-budget indie crime thrillers.
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- Genre: Crime
- Country: United States
- Director: Jaron Lockridge
- Cast: Visionz2turnt, Jeff Haltom, Mike Love
