Kill the Poor

Name: Kill the Poor
Director: Alan Taylor
Released: 2003

Alan Taylor

2003

Synopsis

When a marriage of convenience becomes the real thing, Joe moves his pregnant French wife to a tenement building on New York's Lower East Side. The street is like a war zone with none of the nostalgic appeal that Joe remembers from tales of his immigrant grandparents arriving in the same neighborhood with a new life. This is the urban frontier filled with comic mixture of gentrifies, homeboys, dealers and local residents simply bent on staying a float

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Recommendations

70
Variety
Result hovers a little uncertainly between dark comedy and urban drama, but remains compelling thanks to its gritty narrative texture, nervous energy and loose, jumpy structure, which fit well with the DV-shot production's no-frills approach.
67
The A.V. Club
Taylor makes the most of his tiny budget with creative editing and shooting, though his New York City is anemic, narrow, and underpopulated, and his constant repetition of the same damn 60 seconds of music becomes excruciating.
63
TV Guide Magazine
If you know there's so such place as Avenue E in the East Village, or if you've ever taken a bath in your kitchen, this one's for you.
50
Village Voice
Shot on a modest DV budget, Kill the Poor isn't pretty, but it's a balanced look at the dirty politics of gentrification.
50
The New York Times
There's potential here for an incendiary riff on gentrification and its discontents, but the result is only lukewarm. While the ensemble is as pungent as its assorted clichés will permit, the cruddy video photography and haphazard organization of plot blunt the wry thrust of the material.
50
New York Post
Sort of a poor man's "Rent" - minus the music and the AIDS - and much blander than the title would have you expect.
42
Entertainment Weekly
As an overwrought, overacted drama, Kill the Poor is negligible.