Paper Soldiers

Rap singers have so much money and nothing to spend it on. Or so it would appear, regardless of the songs that insist they spend their ‘paper’ or ‘cream’ on bitch ho’s, smoking green or 40s of Kris.

Because that seems to be the case with Paper Soldiers, a laughable effort from a bunch of no-namers. Apparently being based on the life of Vaugn Simms (whoever he’s supposed to be), this stinker details the life of crime undertaken to pay the bills. The life of crime is all about breaking and entering peoples’ homes and stealing stuff worth selling. And that’s it. What’s more, there never seems to be anyone at home in broad daylight and these guys are less than professional in their execution of their so-called art.

"Who’s this f*ckin’ knucklehead you got us f*ckin’ wit?"

I’m not even gonna bother telling you any more than that, because there’s nothing to this crappy story about how cool it is to be a thug and crime lord, regardless of how pitiful you actually are as a person. Performances are fairly damp with a script to match and the story flows about as fast as a swamp, getting just as murky half the time and filled with as much lowlife and bottom-feeders.

While calling itself a comedy, there is nothing to laugh about here. People robbing honest people isn’t funny, regardless of how it is treated. People getting gunned down isn’t funny, nor is the kind of brainless stupidity of a bully who beats people for no apparent reason other than that he’s a bully. It’s not comical beating, it’s dead serious and woefully unamusing. If you’re into the whole homie thing I’d still recommend giving this a wide, wide berth because it reeks. It’s filled with a bit cast of rappers who have nothing better to do than sit around bragging all day about how criminal they are and swearing at each other. I can hear that at the mall if I want, I don’t need it on my telly.

Well, there’s nothing wrong with the picture quality on this stench from 2002. Delivered in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio with anamorphic homieness, it looks crisp and clean with little to no artefacts and good colour saturation. There are some moments of grain in rare interior darks to mar what is generally a flawless presentation, but otherwise everything looks good, including shadow detail which is better than average.

There is a fairly good Dolby Digital 5.1 surround delivery here that sees (hears?) the surrounds employed throughout the majority of the film, though it mostly just carries the tireless hip-hop gangsta soundtrack. There are even some occasions of ‘70s wokka-wokka that always sound cool, though most is the deep booming bass of rap. The subwoofer works hard to support the bass and this does a fine job.

Dialogue is fairly clear, although there are some homies who mumble just a little too often. There are also some dodgier changes of dialogue in post-production that don’t synch up with what someone is actually saying with their mouths. That is always loathed, regardless of the film.

There is a God and he has saved me the stinky task of trawling through extras, as there are none. There’s a crappy ‘late-save’ and all on the main menu too where the two words of Scene Selection don’t have matching fonts or colour. Nice work lame-o’s.

This is garbage, plain and simple. There are no laughs, which is comedy suicide of course, the acting is stupid and the story is boring as hell. The director also produces and stars in this shelf-filler, which can be a good indicator of a pile of crap.

And here it is.