Synopsis
An aspiring DJ, from the South Bronx, and his best friend, a promoter, try to get into show business by exposing people to hip-hop music and culture.
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Cast
- Guy DavisKenny Kirkland
- Rae Dawn ChongTracy Carlson
- Saundra SantiagoCarmen Cararro
- Doug E. FreshHimself
- Mary AliceCora
- Shawn ElliottDomingo
- Duane JonesRobert
- Kadeem HardisonHigh School Student (scenes deleted)
- Jon ChardietRamon
- Leon W. GrantChollie
Recommendations
- 88
Chicago Tribune
An upbeat, thoroughly entertaining street film about an entertainment revolution in the depressed South Bronx, featuring break dancing, graffiti art and record mixing. A black and Puerto Rican version of Saturday Night Fever. [08 June 1984, p.12] - 70
The New York Times
Designed for everybody who still hasn't had his or her fill of break dancing, or who doesn't yet understand that break dancing, rap singing and graffiti are legitimate expressions of the urban artistic impulse. - 70
Washington Post
The music is electric on Beat Street, a good-natured, emotional movie, where morals are as sound as they were in the mom's-in-the-kitchen, dad's-in-insurance sitcoms of the '50s and '60s. - 50
Time Out London
Pretty bland, but you have to admit co-producer Belafonte had an eye for talent, spotlighting HipHop legends-in-the-making Afrika Bambaata and the Soul Sonic Force, the Rock Steady Crew, and Grand Master Melle Mel and The Furious Five. - 50
TV Guide Magazine
This energetic hip-hop musical barely supplements the large-scale musical numbers with its cliched plot, but it does capture a sense of the break-dancing craze and is more entertaining than most of the films made to cash in on that trend.
