Charm City Kings

"Life happens at the crossroads."

2020 2h 5m EN

🙌

7.8

BANGER

★7.8TMDB · 508

Drama

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

Mouse desperately wants to join The Midnight Clique, the infamous Baltimore dirt bike riders who rule the summertime streets. When Midnight’s leader, Blax, takes 14-year-old Mouse under his wing, Mouse soon finds himself torn between the straight-and-narrow and a road filled with fast money and violence.

“Life happens at the crossroads.”

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Cast

Jahi Di'Allo Winston
Mouse
Meek Mill
Blax
Teyonah Parris
Mouse’s Mom
William Catlett
Detective Rivers
Kezii Curtis
Sweartagawd
Donielle T. Hansley Jr.
Lamont
Milan Ray
Shay
Chandler DuPont
Nicki

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Ángel Manuel Soto
Writers: Sherman Payne, Barry Jenkins, Chris Boyd
Languages: French, English
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 6 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: French, English.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Ángel Manuel Soto, shot by Katelin Arizmendi. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Alex Somers. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Luis Carballar shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

AWARDS

Did you know

Jahi Di'Allo Winston and Meek Mill and Teyonah Parris carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "Life happens at the crossroads.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt9048840 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Ángel Manuel Soto directs. Katelin Arizmendi behind the camera. Alex Somers scores. Luis Carballar cuts. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in French, English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Released 6 years ago.
2Dialogue crosses 2 languages: French, English.
3Directed by Ángel Manuel Soto, shot by Katelin Arizmendi. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
4Original score by Alex Somers. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
5Editor Luis Carballar shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6Jahi Di'Allo Winston and Meek Mill and Teyonah Parris carry the top of the cast.
7Marketing tagline: "Life happens at the crossroads.".
8IMDB entry: tt9048840 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

The technical file

Cinematography: Katelin Arizmendi
Original score: Alex Somers
Editing: Luis Carballar
Production design: Scott Dougan
Makeup / hair: Sandra Linn Koepper
Sound: Frédéric Dubois
Runtime: 125 min · 2h 5m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Original language: EN
Certification (US): R
IMDB: Charm City Kings (2020)

Awards

Sundance Special Jury Prize Dramatic

Individual records documented via Wikidata; the summary above may count more.

Also by

Ángel Manuel Soto

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Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

tmdb280390232022-08-30
★ 6/10
Charm City Kings evokes such films as Boyz n’ the Hood, A Bronx Tale, and Torque. I know; one of those things isn’t like the others. The filmmakers, however, put the motorcycle fetish to good use, infusing it with imagery that’s almost religious in order to reveal its real-world impracticality. Mouse (Jahi Di'Allo Winston) is a bright 14-year-old boy with a natural affinity for and encyclopedic knowledge of animals that make him a natural-born veterinarian — if he lives long enough to become one. His late older brother Stro (Tyquan Ford), whom Mouse idolized, has become the patron saint of Mouse's adoration of bikes; whenever he speaks about them, Mouse is overwhelmed with a kind of ecstatic, frantic fervor. Meanwhile, gangbanger Blax (Meek Mill) and detective Rivers (Will Catlett) butt heads over Mouse’s future. It’s worth noting that this conflict is not distilled into a black-and-white morality, and the two men strike an unexpected deal to ensure Mouse gets a second chance. The film has been skillfully staged, photographed and edited (Katelin Arizmendi’s cinematography in particular provides us with a vivid experience of the Baltimore summer streets) — perhaps a little too much so; there’s a high speed chase that ironically seems to glorify exactly the sort of behavior that the movie as a whole condemns. Cutting this sequence would have solved another pressing issue: that of the excessive running time. I’m splitting hairs, though; unlike most movies about motorized criminals (like Fast and Furious, to mention one other than Torque), Charm City Kings knows that actions have consequences; can't live life in the fast lane very long without crashing sooner or later. The film is also aware that cycles must be broken for things to change. Mouse goes down the same path as his brother, never stopping to think that he could end up the same way; on the contrary, he is convinced that for some reason he is different, special — and he is, or rather, he could be, if he really wanted to. I'm always complaining about kids acting like adults in movies for no other reason than that it's 'cute.' Here, though, Winston acts not like an adult but like a child doing his best to appear older than his age to fit in with the group he wants to be a part of. Fittingly, his performance isn't resolute and steady but tentative and uncertain, and that's the perfect note for the character (Blax even warns him that a real man doesn't stutter or look down, failing to realize at the time that Mouse remains, despite his bravado, a kid who has no idea what he's getting himself into). This is a great performance from Winston as a kid who, on streets where children must often grow too fast for their own good, wants to be the first to cross the finish line.

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