Feel the Noise

A young Harlem rapper (Omarion Grandberry), on the run from gangsters after trying to strip their car, goes to Puerto Rico to stay with the father he never knew (Giancarlo Esposito); while there, he forms a fusion musical partnership with his stepbrother (Victor Rasuk) and falls for a local dancer (Zulay Henao), then the three of them travel back to New York to jump into the cutthroat music business. Albert Leon’s script rambles heedlessly from cliché to cliché, while director Alejandro Chomski draws awkwardly sincere performances. The music is infectious, if undistinguished, but its effect is undermined by awkward and arbitrary editing; the songs just lie there to be listened to without building visually. Zoran Popovic’s cinematography is vividly colorful in Puerto Rico, but washed-out and flat in New York.