Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Street Smart Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 27, 2015

Pop quiz, hotshot journalist. There's a major article due soon. Sources have clammed up. The trail is running cold. A word has yet to be typed. The truth has yet to be revealed. What do you do? Ask for an extension? Throw in the towel? Plagiarize? Shoot the hostage? How about just make something up? Street Smart tells a story that sees the unintentional intersecting of right and wrong, of accidents and coincidences, of truth and fiction. It'a a film where the life of a bad man and a desperate man intersect through unfortunate chance. It's a story of spiraling wrongs, increasing desperation, and endless fear. Though perhaps not quite so tightly wound and suffocating as it might should have been, Street Smart makes for a relatively fascinating look at how life sometimes has a funny way of bending back the wrong way, how one seemingly innocent little moment -- a blow to the head, putting pen to paper -- can spin into a leviathan of pressure and destroy lives.

The perks of the job.

Jonathan Fisher (Christopher Reeve) is a prominent investigative journalist whose career is at a crossroads. He's not the respected reporter he once was, but he hits it big again with a hard-hitting, well-written, and hugely insightful look into the life of pimps and prostitutes on New York's shadiest streets. And he made it all up. Every last word of it. Nevertheless, the piece is a major hit that puts him squarely in the journalistic spotlight. At the same time, a New York pimp known as "Fast Black" (Morgan Freeman) is charged with murder after beating, and inadvertently killing, a man who was smacking around one of his girls. When the district attorney catches wind of Fisher's piece, he hypothesizes that Fisher has been in contact with Fast Black and may have information vital to the case. Of course, Fisher cannot produce the evidence the prosecution wants because it simply doesn't exist. But he cannot admit as much lest he out himself as a fraud. Now, he and Fast Black both face prison time and are caught in a maelstrom from which neither can escape but that promises to suck them deeper into the depths of their own corrupt worlds.

On its surface, Street Smart delivers a powerfully gritty view of the prostitution underworld, creating an accessible (thanks to Freeman's brilliant performance) yet vividly terrifying portrait of life on the streets and the controlling, and oftentimes violent and unrelenting, pimp-prostitute relationship. It's a dark yet fascinating insight, but it's only a part of a greater whole. Street Smart may not be more rawly engaging when it comes to its center -- the tale of a journalist caught in a firestorm sparked by a big, yet seemingly innocent, lie -- but that center proves dramatically chilling in its own right. The core story feels like, essentially, a cautionary tale that speaks to the perils of lying, particularly when that lie mixes up with an already dark underbelly of violence, corruption, and human tragedy. For Jonathan Fisher, the lie is essentially a sale of the soul to the devil, a trade of one's integrity and, eventually, very freedom born of a sudden and desperate reach to stay on top that yields but a fleeting moment of glory, a quick bump up in the ratings, a meteoric rise into a spotlight that shines more brightly yet also more harshly than he anticipated. The story details are usually dwarfed by the more challenging narrative underbelly, then, but the film does a fine enough job of blending it all together -- that seedy New York subculture, Fisher's personal corruption, and the external details that drive the story forward -- and creating a viably dark and insightful film that challenges the audience's perception of humanity on several levels.

It's in the performances, however, where the film flourishes. They are the means by which the story becomes more than just a collection of grit and soul-searching details but rather a very human, tangibly dark, and robust tale of corruption by several means. Morgan Freeman is absolutely brilliant in the part, his first Oscar nominated effort yet, from a character perspective, a far cry from the marquee roles that would follow in films like Glory and Driving Miss Daisy in which the legendary actor would portray more grounded, relatable, genuine, centrally sound figures rather than, essentially, a monster. What amazing depth and range he is capable of delivering. Freeman is downright frightening in the part, particularly in a scene in which he threatens to remove one eye or the other from one of his frightened, weeping, hopeless girls. Reeve satisfies as the journalist in over his head, but he doesn't bring the same level of authenticity to the part that makes Freeman's role one of the finest depictions of the darker side of humanity in film history.

Street Smart Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Street Smart's 1080p transfer is far from perfect but far from terrible. The good outnumbers the bad, but the margin is a bit closer than fans rightly demand. The image presents nicely enough on the surface. Details are adequately complex, particularly some of the rougher, grittier street-level textures. Old beat up building façades, signs, pavement, and other bits look fairly nice and help pull the viewer deeper into the movie. Yet general near-frame details largely disappoint. Clothes and faces are flat, the latter fairly pasty and lacking more than cursory superficial definition. Grain is retained and often thick, but the image is also home to a steady diet of noise. Colors are many but not particularly well nuanced; reds in particular are muddy and sloppy and overly saturated, bleeding a bit and looking more plopped onto the screen rather than naturally, and intricately, shaded. Still, the many colors of the sleazy New York streets hold up well enough, particularly illuminated signs at night. Black levels are fine but border on crush in places and show spiky grain and noise in others. Flesh tones push a little warm. Heavy print wear is evident throughout, but banding, macroblocking, edge enhancement, and other eyesores aren't causes for alarm.

Street Smart Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Street Smart arrives on Blu-ray with a decent DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack. The presentation satisfies but doesn't go above and beyond the call of duty. Music plays with a fairly basic middle-imaged presentation, seeming to drift just a bit to the sides but focused primarily in the phantom center channel. Clarity satisfies and, in fact, the track demonstrates a solid enough command of the material, presenting it with nice definition throughout the range and quality instrumental detailing. The track produces some viable support pieces by way of atmospherics in locations such as bars and parties, both of which offer some fairly detailed, but of course in no way immersive, elements, from chatty patrons to light background music. Dialogue is clear enough, nicely defined and, like the music, playing with good faux center placement.

Street Smart Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Street Smart contains no bonus content. The main menu only offers selections for "Play" and "Chapters."

Street Smart Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Street Smart toys with excellence and achieves it in several categories -- its gritty depiction of New York's prostitution underground, and, of course, Freeman's outstanding performance -- but it only dances to the periphery in other key areas, notably in its core story that never quite fully explores the sort of ugly truths of Fisher's moral quagmire and the minefield he's dropped into as a result. It's still a largely fascinating piece that could have been more but that does linger on the fringe of narrative greatness. Olive Films' Blu-ray release of Street Smart features adequate video and audio. No extras are included. Recommended for purchase on a deep sale.