Belly (1998)

"A grim and poignant debut.  Phillip Booth, Orlando Weekly
"The most technically polished hip-hop film to date...  Orange County Register

Editor's Note A stylish urban drama about two childhood friends who stand on opposite sides of the law. A visually stunning, brutally honest film from critically acclaimed music video director Hype Williams. Rappers Nas and DMX make their big screen debuts.

	Earl "DMX" Simmons
	Hassan Johnson
	Taral Hicks
	Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins
	Method Man
	Nasir "Nas" Jones
	Hype Williams - Director
	Nasir "Nas" Jones - Screenplay
	Anthony Bodden - Screenplay

Sight and Sound
"...Gorgeous hues, surreal fish-eyed perspectives and pulsating varispeed camerawork..." 08/??/1999 p.40-1

USA Today
"...Hype Williams makes his big-screen debut with a gritty tale of trust, betrayal and redemption that plays like a 90-minute version of the music video director's specialty..." 11/20/1998 p.6E

Box Office
"...An impressive feature film debut....BELLY nicely showcases some new acting talent crossing over from the music world, and conveys its message effectively..." 12/01/1998 p.44

Los Angeles Times
"...It builds refreshingly and unexpectedly to a spirit of redemption and responsibility....BELLY looks great..." 11/04/1998 p.C2

Orlando Weekly 8 of 10
Hype Williams, an acclaimed video director who has worked with Sean "Puffy" Combs, LL Cool J and others, simultaneously illuminates the lure of the street and the spiritual crises of the modern age in Belly. It's a grim and poignant debut feature driven by the charismatic, impressively drawn performances of its rap and R&B stars. Williams, directing from his own script, employs an off-kilter visual flair that charges the film from the start, as a rapid-fire succession of images from the thug life is accompanied by a voiceover confession, told in rhyme: "I sold my soul to the devil. The price was cheap."... The film, pumped up with a soundtrack that ranges from the Delta blues and jazz of Olu Dara to the hip-hop and R&B of the movie's actors and the likes of Soul II Soul and D'Angelo, lets down only with its somewhat heavy-handed conclusion. - Phillip Booth

New York Times 6 of 10
A mountain of style buries a molehill of wishful thinking in the Hype Williams film Belly. On the eve of a new millennium, it ponders the fate of young black men drawn to drugs, violence, easy money and sexual license, and weakly invokes the spirits of everyone from Marcus Garvey to Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X to preach the virtues of godliness, lawfulness, fidelity and plain old decency. And all the while its visual style glamorizes the fruits of casual killings and outlaw life: gleaming cars, complaisant women and piles of cash. Belly is a film that begs for a pat on the head for its virtue while catering to cinematic tastes more interested in crotch shots, topless dancers, wall-sized television screens, ganja galore and, wherever possible, crime without punishment, all to the accompaniment of a high-octane soundtrack. In Belly, Williams, a graduate of music videos making his feature-film debut as writer and director, uses rapid cuts, multiple images, superimpositions, slow motion and highly dramatic lighting among other devices as he assembles an assortment of rap artists in a tale set in 1999 among mostly undereducated urban black teen-agers... The film draws to a close with an eloquent plea for change in the new millennium... - Lawrence Van Gelder

Philadelphia City Paper 8 of 10
...Belly is amazing to see...the movie goes on to showcase its sensational visual style...shot by brillant cinematographer Malik Sayeed, who filmed Spike Lee's Clocker's and He Got Game. - Cindy Fuchs