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The film centers on a young African-American boy whose job is to run on errand for drug dealer. He attempts to deal with many difficulties for survival in the dark world.
The script by writer-director Boaz Yakin is fresh itself, marrying the physical violence of Fresh's world with the intellectual violence of competitive chess.
Sean Nelson is a quiet revelation as the title character, a child who actively participates in what he regards as the only game in town, yet consistently demonstrates more caution and smarts than his friends or relatives.
The strength of the piece is that it realises which aspects of its genre have been seen too many times, always coming back to Nelson's blank but expressive stare as he watches terrible things the director doesn't need to shove in our faces.
Glibly shocking, it would like you to think it deals with the hard realities of urban life, but in fact it uses its patina of social consciousness as a come-on for the most conventional kind of violent commercial filmmaking.