August 31, 1994 | At the start of Fresh, the drop-dead brilliant film by first-time writer-director Boaz Yakin, the title character is introduced as he makes the early-morning rounds of his Brooklyn neighborhood. He arrives at the apartment of a sweet-voiced matron to pick up several packets of heroin. She serves him milk and cookies, then tries to short-change him. But Fresh is too smart, and too experienced, to fall for her scam.
Next, Fresh takes the full delivery to the right-hand man of his favorite employer. He’s asked to stick around, because the boss wants to talk with him, but Fresh can’t wait. He’s afraid that, if he doesn’t hurry, he will be late for school.
And when you’re just 12 years old, that kind of tardiness can get you into serious trouble.
The bitter ironies abound in Fresh, a movie that is at once brutally blunt and unsettlingly understated as it matter-of-factly follows its young black protagonist through one of the most riveting coming-of-age dramas in recent memory.
Fresh (Sean Nelson) is far wiser than his years — in his environment, he’s had to grow up fast — and smart enough to be something of a budding chess whiz. He lives with 11 cousins and the good-hearted aunt who has taken them all in. If he can remain alive long enough, he just might be able to make something of himself. But that’s a mighty big if.
Fresh is not, strictly speaking, a drama about loss of innocence, since it’s very clear right from the start that Fresh has already seen enough of hell to have fallen from grace. He works part time for Esteban (Giancarlo Esposito), a silky heroin dealer who views his trade as “a gentleman’s business.”
Sometimes, Fresh also sells crack for another “businessman” in the ‘hood. He keeps his head down and his bankroll hidden. Sam (Samuel L. Jackson), Fresh’s boozy absentee father, jeers: “You figure as long as you aren’t drowning, everything is alright.” Sam means it as criticism. For a long time, though, Fresh appears to embrace it as his personal credo.
But then the day comes when Fresh is cruelly shocked out of his impassivity, when he witnesses two violent murders — one deliberate, one accidental — at a neighborhood playground. And that’s when Fresh begins to reveal just how much he has learned from his two mentors: Esteban, who has taught his delivery boy to accept responsibility and take precautions; and Sam, a chess hustler who encourages his son to sacrifice pawns in pursuit of a greater goal.
On one level, Yakin’s film is an ingeniously constructed melodrama of deception and retribution, recalling Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest (and Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo) as Fresh plots to turn rival drug dealers against each other. But Yakin is after something more complicated, and much more audacious, than providing the instant gratification of violent catharsis. Indeed, there are surprisingly few graphic depictions of violence in Fresh. (There isn’t even a gangsta-rap soundtrack — instead, the movie has an effectively moody orchestral score by former Police member Stewart Copeland.) But although we don’t see the worst of it, we do see that Fresh sees all of it.
There is a moment during Esteban’s assault on a rival’s headquarters when Fresh sits on the hood of a car, calmly munches on a candy bar, and watches the carnage as impassively as someone viewing a televised sporting event. And you can’t help thinking: Nothing can touch this kid anymore. But then there is a devastating final image — equal in impact to a similar image in Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows — that makes you realize how much all of this affects Fresh. And how great a price he pays for his victory.
Samuel L. Jackson is excellent as Fresh’s father, a proud but broken man given to furiously impotent rages. And Giancarlo Esposito hits a career high point with his insinuating, sinister portrayal of Esteban. But the most fascinating performance comes from Sean Nelson, a quietly remarkable newcomer who conveys, with heart-rending persuasiveness, all the pain, rage and ruthlessness that roil beneath the surface of Fresh’s blank-faced imperturbability.
Fresh is, hands down, the best American movie released this year. But be forewarned: It is not a pretty picture.
