Bad...Even for Vondie Curtis Hall Seriously, next time you hear a black director complaining about how tough it is to get their movie made or how biased the Hollywood system is don't blame 'the man' no matter how tempting...blame Vondie Curtis Hall. Once thought to be the Spike Lee of useless people, Mr. Hall vaulted himself into the loser hall of fame not long after Gridlock'd for his work on the monumental Glitter, which would have been the Gigli of it's day had Mariah Carey not been long washed up by the time of its release. Lil' Vondie did no better with Gridlock'd despite having a decent cast and a plot revolving around heroin, which was like the goose that laid the golden demographic during most of the 90's. Unfortunately, Hall chose to make the actors say line that even Jesus couldn't pull off and throw in every cliché in three books. I guess he thought that making a relevant black movie was as easy as being black and hiring a prominent hip hop star to act in unfortunately his worst, and I believe last, role of a relatively short career. Throw in a little Tim Roth during his "I'm too cool for school because I'm in some Tarantino flicks and can do no wrong" period of overratedness and some absolutely embarrassingly brutal scenes of the two of them in a Jazz club playing stand-up bass and keyboards, respectively, with Thandie Newton on vocals and you, my dear Vondie, have a perfect recipe for a truly pathetic disaster. But you have to give him a little credit, somehow he convinced two pretty big stars to take a chance on his little movie, who most would think was not even quite at first draft stage, (although who knows...maybe it would have been great with a competent director)and somehow after this horrific disaster still lived to magically taint the disease-ridden career of Mariah Carey to irreparable levels. I'm no expert, but I'd say he does a lot of praying.