Our America (2002) NR - 3½ Stars

This kids are great!!! So grown up from the street alone, LeAlan and Lloyd know just what it's like first hand to live in the ghetto. Their lives aren't easy but they're determined to talk their way to the top.

LeAlan Jones (Roderick Pannell) and Lloyd Newman (Brandon Hammond) are two teenage boys living in the inner-city of Chicago. The two have a knack at playing off of each other's lines to describe their circumstances and both yearn to be reporters. When they get word of a local NPR broadcaster looking for two intelligent African American to be on the radio, their determined to get the job. They smooth talk their way into the producers office and get a chance to do a demo for him. David Isay (Josh Charles), really likes the boys and decides to give them tape recorders so they can go out and give their take on what it's like to grow up where they live. The two describe how dangerous it is just to get to school and back. Anger grows when the neighborhood starts to feel that the boys are making the black people look bad just for the white man's benefit. When a young boy is thrown from the 14th story to his death, many neighbors don't want to be bothered. But the two do some investigating of their own and finally solve the murder and change every one's opinion.

Come Sunday Productions
Director: Ernest R. Dickerson
Writer: Gordon Rayfield
Producer: Eda Godel Hallinan

I viewed 8/07