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The drama 'Chapter & verse' revolves around Lance Ingram, the gang leader who spent 8 years in prison, who is punished for many crimes committed in his life. But he left another person who entered prison where he wanted to work honorably and keep away from all the evil deeds he had done before.
Resonating with an authenticity borne of the experiences of its director/co-screenwriter Jamal Joseph, Chapter & Verse movingly portrays the plight of a recently released ex-con striving to make a new life for himself on the mean streets of Harlem.
Beaty's original screenplay and performance stand out to make Chapter & Verse a remarkable chapter in African-American storytelling from the twenty-first century.
Chapter &Verse is not simply a story about new beginnings. It's a film about all the ways things have changed for Black people (Black men in particular) and all of the ways that they have continued to remain the same.
The story, scripted by Beaty and poet/author-turned-filmmaker Jamal Joseph (who himself did five-and-a-half years in Leavenworth) dips into sloppy, melodramatic heavy-handedness, sullying the occasional spurts of fresh perspective.
The movie's wide-screen framing, ruthless plot reversals and say-what-you-mean writing sometimes recall a master of socially conscious cinema from another era, Sam Fuller. But this is a picture with its own strong voice.
The utter realness of this story and the way it has been handled is the resonating strength of Jamal Joseph's gripping, affecting study of survival in today's Harlem.