2016 Directed by J.D. Dillard
A young street magician is left to take care of his little sister after his mother's passing and turns to drug dealing in the Los Angeles party scene to keep a roof over their heads. When he gets into trouble with his supplier, his sister is kidnapped and he is forced to rely on both his sleight of hand and brilliant mind to save her.
Jacob Latimore Seychelle Gabriel Storm Reid Sasheer Zamata Dulé Hill Cameron Esposito Michael Villar Brandon Johnson Jay Walker Alex Hyner Mane Andrew Lyndsi LaRose Roland Buck III Donzaleigh Abernathy Kaye L. Morris Klement Tinaj Carrie Jo Hubrich Marilyn Flores Frank Clem Mora Carew Mickael De Sinno Joel Ezra Hebner Jimmy Flint-Smith Natasha Drewniak Roya Backlund Kimberly Cohen Victoria Martonne Roman Xing Keith R. Fowler Show All…
Jason Blum Michael J. Luisi Keith R. Fowler Jaremy Aiello Cyrus Zahabian Ilana Zahabian Shaul Dina Justin Farajzadeh
Juegos de manos, Sleight - Tricks und Drugs und Zauberei, Juego de magos, Juego de manos
WHERE'S THE MAGIC?!?!?!?
this lil bitch is some sorta 'magician' but all he does is twiddle his thumbs and get his ass beat for 90 minutes
A street magician and an orphan spend his time wowing people with his skills, while selling drugs to help raise his sister and himself. But when things get intense with his shady job, he will have to go to certain extremes to make it out to another day.
The acting for most of its part is pretty good. Latimore made for a good lead that had me invested with his arc throughout the film. It was awesome (though weird) to see my man Dule Hill from the nerve wrack as Gus in Psych to this gangster guy on the film, it took me a while but he eventually came as a threatening antagonist. The sound design and mixing sounded a…
Squanders a really intriguing setup by just hard-turning into a drug-dealer-wants-out thriller before reminding you at the last minute that it really just wanted to be UNBREAKABLE.
"Doing something no one else is willing to do makes you a magician"
-Bo, a confused magician.
You had me at teen street magician drug crime drama.
This movie is super fun, but not great. First time writer and director J.D. Dillard is creative and talented but I think needs more practice, and a slightly bigger budget, before his masterpiece arrives. In Sleight, there is too heavy of Winding Refn/Shyamalan vibe for it to feel like a unique voice and the acting is a little off, in my opinion, for what the film is trying to accomplish. I like Jacob Latimore in the lead but Dule Hill just isn't menacing enough in the Angelo role and Seychelle Gabriel just isn't…
A street magician is good with "Sleight",
But not always looking to fight.
Opposites attract,
When in fact,
He can use electromagnets for might.
A promising debut from co-writer and director J.D. Dillard, Sleight is a rare but refreshing non-IP superhero origin story as well as a gripping crime thriller and a compelling family drama, with solid direction and performances, well-crafted visuals, and interesting characters.
39/100
Las Vegas Weekly review. Hopefully I'm not making the same catastrophic mistake here that I did the first time I saw The Prestige, viz. getting irrationally annoyed at the treatment of magic in a film that isn't really about magic. Even if I were to come around on where this ends up, though, pretty sure all the drug-dealing melodrama—which is most of the movie—would seem just as phony.
Sleight has more than it's fair share of flaws, but even then it's easy to see why Justin Dillard's film was such a popular hit at Sundance. While the "want out of the drug game" central narrative is undeniably familiar and a bit underwhelming considering the elements on play and the more risque sci-fi aspects remain underplayed, together it makes for a nonetheless somewhat refreshing entry into a genre that so concentrates on the bombastic glory that it makes Sleight feel all the better for its more pared-down and relatively grounded approach.
Jacob Latimore certainly pulls his weight in the lead role and successfully anchors the film even as all hell breaks loose and Dillard's direction is clever enough to…
SLEIGHT is a great example of the level of filmmaking you can achieve on a microbudget when the direction is understated, focused and your leads make for compelling viewing. It's just a shame the script didn't break away from the typical narrative beats, despite the sci-fi twist.
pretty generic but briskly paced. plus that lead really charmed the shit out of me
Frankly, a pretty cool film about a street magician that has more tricks up his sleeve than what others would expect from him. Things don't go exactly well, and he will have to use his tricks in more creative ways. The lowkey style, and keeping it smaller made it for a much more enjoyable and interesting film, with a very solid cast.
Everyone has their reasons for wanting to see a movie. Maybe its the director, or the plot, or the setting, or the actors. That was mine. My sole reason for going to see this movie was for Dule Hill. And, in that respect at least, I was very pleased.
Right away I realized that the fact this was pitched as a super hero movie was very misleading. Its about Bashir “Bo” Wolfe, a street magician trying to take care of his little sister and raise enough money to move them into a nicer school district, who also moonlights as a drug dealer for the seemingly nice but actually ruthless Angelo. In order to make more money doing his street shows…
