Guilty by Association (2003)

Touches You

So much average

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This movie was badly shot, the sound was awful and the acting left little to be desired. It was your typical clichéd run-of-the mill gangster film, trying to be sentimental. Do not rent this movie, there is a reason it went straight to video! I watched the film because my boyfriend had chosen it, he then decided to fall asleep next to me and forced me to torment myself by watching the movie until the end. The cast is unknown, the director was probably doing a favour for someone's uncle's cousin's kid. That or he was desperate for the cash. I'm all for supporting up-and-coming young Hollywood hot shots but this was abysmal. Morgan chose to let his name be associated with this movie, that makes him guilty of forcing us viewers to watch a really bad film!!!! How many times can Morgan Freeman play the good cop facing troubled times? Enough already!

Okay, so I'm walking through Family Video looking for a movie and I see a Morgan Freeman movie! I'm a fan of his... I think I'll check it out. Mr Freeman has a total of about 20 lines in this movie, in his 10 minutes on screen at the end. I guess if you like gang-related movies and don't mind a reeeeeeeeeeeally slow moving movie, you might sit through the whole thing. Unfortunately, I can comprehend dialog a little faster than this movie drips it. Overall, the acting is very poor, the pace super slow, camera work looks like amateur, and the lack of Morgan in an advertised Morgan Freeman movie is incredible. If you bought this movie, you should give credit to the advertising agency that took your cash.

Guilty by Association is a case study in misrepresentation. The trailer that was included in the DVD extras gives the impression that the movie will be an taut urban action thriller with Morgan Freeman chasing down a child killer. Instead, we get a preachy second rate faux-docudrama about a drug partnership gone bad.The trailer was far superior to the movie. The trailer has tension, action, and pacing. Perhaps the trailer editor is the one who should have made Guilty by Association. The movie is at times laughably amateurish and often downright insulting to the viewer's intelligence.The stupidest scene (among others) is where a cop calls the murdered child's mother to tell her that her kid has been murdered. Excuse me? Anyone with enough brains to hit the "off" button on the remote knows that this is a sensitive situation that would be handled in person by the cop.All that can be concluded from this poor effort is that Morgan Freeman must have owed someone a BIG favor. That's the only explanation for his being Guilty by Association with this movie.

I was amazed by the negative comments and votes this film got from other IMDB viewers.. It may be an issue with the expectations raised by trailers or advertising in the US, I do not know. Having rented the movie on DVD, I was not disappointed by seeing it, and will not ask for the money or time back. The only minus of this film is the thinness - too short (80 minutes) for an usual length movie. However, the format of pseudo-docu-drama fits the time, and fits the subject of violence in the US cities, and among the young generation and hopeless life of certain Afro-American social categories. The film is also in line with the rap-style art, quite hot among the young ones nowadays. I liked the movie, and despite the fact that I would have liked Morgan Freeman to have a more consistent role, I do not think that he needs to be ashamed to have his name associated with this film. 7 out of 10 on my personal scale.