Cut Throat City

The history of Hurricane Katrina is a long way from being written, but with a little bit of distance comes the opportunity for stories. There are many factors – from climate change to institutional discrimination – that make New Orleans an untapped space for stories of corruption. In Cut Throat City, legendary musician and director RZA offers his own take on the politics of the Big Easy’s recovery.

In the months following Hurricane Katrina, the residents of New Orleans’s Lower Ninth have been mostly abandoned by their government. Struggling to make ends meet, artist Blink (Moore) and his childhood friends make the tough decision to go to work for "Cousin" Bass (T.I.), the neighborhood heavy who sees an opportunity to steal as much as he can before gentrification takes over. When the job goes sideways, Blink and his friends go on the run, trying their best to avoid Cousin, a newly appointed detective (González) hot on their heels, and the city councilman (Hawke) who may or may not pull all the strings.

On the surface, Cut Throat City presents RZA with the perfect vehicle to meld his musical and filmmaking careers. Exploring economic discrimination through the lens of Seventies gangster movies is the right hook for someone who has, in one way or another, contributed to some of the best genre cinema of the past two decades. And setting the film in a post-Katrina Lower Ninth instantly gives RZA’s film teeth. Cut Throat City suggests a version of New Orleans that, by design, prevents the city’s Black residents from climbing out of its Katrina-shaped hole. As COVID-19 widens the gap between the rich and the poor in communities across the country, Cut Throat City’s institutional assault feels sadly timely.

The film also gets tremendous mileage from its cast. It’s no accident that the film chooses to name drop Tarantino in its opening act. As much as the film serves as a showcase for up-and-coming actors like Moore and González, it is the secondary roles – veteran character actors paired with show-stopping monologues – that really gives Cut Throat City its sense of style. Consider Hawke’s drunken “conversation” with his wife’s tombstone about Hurricane Katrina conspiracy theories, or Snipes’ scowling monologue on being “a man.” They may be in the film for mere minutes, but RZA and company know how to weave these moments together into something almost special.

Almost. There are pockets of RZA’s film where these elements combine to create something both entertaining and poignant. When Isaiah Washington’s mortician turns his nose up at a dead body without the proper paperwork, or Cousin shrugs off the struggles of a post-Katrina New Orleans in pursuit of his own greed, RZA’s film demonstrates a unique understanding of how class politics and B-movie aesthetics can sneak up on an unsuspecting audience. The shame of his film is that these two halves of the story line up far too infrequently. There is a shorter version of Cut Throat City – one that better blends conspiracy and violence – that would elevate RZA’s film. In the end, the film, like the bank robbers it follows, leaves just a little too much money on the table.