KILL THE POOR
Directed by: Alan Taylor.
Produced by: Ruth Charny, Lianne Halfon, Russell Smith, John Malkovich, Gary Winick & Alexis Alexanian.
Written by: Daniel Handler, based on the novel by Joel Rose.
Director of Photography: Harlan Bosmajian.
Edited by: Malcolm Jamieson.
Music by: Michel Delory & Anna Domino.
Released by: IFC.
Country of Origin: USA. 85 min. Not Rated.
With: David Krumholtz, Clara Bellar, Paul Calderon, Jon Budinoff, Cliff Gorman, Damien Young & Heather Burns.

When Joe (David Krumholtz) moves to what used to be his grandparents' neighborhood, New York's Lower East Side, he realizes things have changed. And since the realization comes sometime between fending off crackheads in the basement and having to steal water pipes from a hospital, it seems to have come a little too late.

Soon after moving in with his French wife and their baby, Joe becomes president of "the corporation," what the residents of this "semi-legal tenement" have named their administrative meetings held in the tiny basement. Although focused on Joe, director Alan Taylor seems more interested in the mottled collection of residents. This brief film spends over half its running time introducing us to the drag queens, the artists, the hookers, and all the other '80s downtown stereotypes that Rent jovially introduced to our lexicon. In Rent, the checklist of these stereotypes and their predictable story lines are played for wide-eyed optimism and amusement, but here their use is neither new nor pliable to this film's weightiness.

But it's unwelcome resident Carlos DeJesus (Paul Calderon) and his son that should be the stars of the film. Having lived in the building before any of the corporation, Carlos refuses to pay them rent. He is the sole reason the homeless and the drug addicts stay away from their quasi-legal apartments, though the other residents believe that this is their own doing and want him out - so much so that one of them sets fire to his apartment, providing a central story line which finally begins after the long exposition.

The actors are all individually excellent, but they clash together - some are one-note funny, some are 3D serious characterizations (the pivotal scenes between Carlos and Joe feel awkward rather than dramatic with Calderon playing Carlos with brute gravity and Krumholtz playing Joe for laughs as a nebbish).

What Taylor does give us is a dynamic portrayal of gentrification. As the residents transform their building into a co-op, we see scenes that show the desire to move up in the world. Scenes like one in which the corporation feels they have a right to steal water pipes from a nearby "new f-----' co-op" are the meat and gristle of the film. As the tenants' scorn grows for Carlos and the homeless, their disdain for the bourgeoisie begins to dwindle. It's a surprisingly critical sentiment centering an otherwise middle-of-the-road film, whose title fittingly derives from a song by the Dead Kennedys. Zachary Jones
January 6, 2006