Review: ‘Next Day Air’

We have seen the Keystone Cops, now music video director Benny Boom has given us the “Keystone Crooks in the hood”  with his new film ‘Next Day Air’.  Boom’s rookie feature film offers stars Donald  Faison (Scrubs), Mike Epps (Hancock), Wood Harris (The Wire) and Mos  Def (16 Blocks). The problem,   ‘Next Day Air’   is a film suffering an identity crisis… it’s a comedy, that thinks its an action film, that wants to be a comedy. Confused, so was I as I exited this film.

‘Next Day Air’   tells the story of Leo Jackson  (Faison), stoner delivery guy that works at his mom’s delivery service Next Day Air. After his mother (Debbie Allen of Fame) gives him the “come to Jesus” speech and threatens to fire him if he screws up again,   Leo goes out and gets stoned just before delivering a ton of Grade A cocaine to a couple of idiotic criminals. Brody (Epps) and Guch (Harris), fresh off butchering a bank robbery where they stole the surveillance tapes instead of the money, now find themselves with $150,000 worth of drugs. They start dreaming of Escalades and fancy cribs instead of who do the drugs really belong to. That would be the Mexican couple across the hall. Jesus and Chita (Cisco Reyes & Yasmin Deliz) are the dealers for a Latino drug king known as Bodega (Emillo Rivera). Bodega informs Jesus and Chita that the drugs have been delivered and they either find them or he will kill them and their families. So Jesus must find the delivery guy and get the drugs back.

Brody tells Guch that his cousin, Shavoo (Omari Hardwick),  can turn the stolen drugs into cash immediately. Shavoo meets the boys and checks out the buy as Bodega and his gang leave to find Leo. On their second attempt to hijack a Next day Air truck, they find Leo getting high. Bodega persuades Leo into taking them back to where he delivered the “package”. This is sure to end badly.

‘Next Day Air’ delivers on that… It ends badly. My biggest disappointment in this below average comedy is they reduced the best actor in the film to a glorified stand in. Mos Def plays Eric, a next day air driver who steals items from his truck to supplement his income. Def is funny and is totally misused in this film. The other tragic quality of this film is the convoluted writing that has you confused by the time the credits role. Boom who has directed videos for 50 cent and Ciara seems to be lost when jumping from 5 minutes to 90. ‘Next Day Air’ is the package that you don’t want showing up on your doorstep!

Rated RÂ   (Language, Drugs and Sexual Content)

90 minutes

[Overall: 1 out of 5 Stars]