Beat Street

Jon Chardiet plays a Puerto Rican youth who targets subway walls for his graffiti renderings. For a while, it looks as though Chardiet's problems will carry the plotline, but before long the film's true raison d'etre comes to the surface. Rap-music deejay Guy Davis, in tandem with such like-minded ...more

Released just a month after the immense success of Breakin', Beat Street added to the shameless product that Hollywood pumped out to fuel the ever-growing obsession with breakdancing culture, though it strived for more than just your usual underdogs plotline. More in line with the strife presented in the similarly themed Rappin' from the following year, Beat Street offers a view of life in the inner city that doesn't always end in a rousing musical number. That's not to say that there aren't ...more