Caught Up

Plot synopsis:
Daryl Allen (Bokeem Woodbine), who narrates, is an ex-con. After serving time on drug charges, he plans to get his life straight, open up a nightclub and be a part of his son Jerome's life. His friend Trip offers to give him money for his business and Daryl accepts. Daryl drives Trip to the bank, unaware he's taking part in a robbery, which makes him furious. The police chase them down and Daryl and Trip are involved in a car accident, which leads Trip getting killed and Daryl sent back to the slammer for a long stretch.
During that period, his girlfriend Trish (Cynda Williams) gets married and moves away with their son. Released after five years, Daryl meets his parole officer (Tony Todd) and is informed that if he gets into trouble again, he will serve 25 to life in prison. Daryl is unemployed when he meets a psychic woman named Vanessa Dietrich (Williams). Daryl and Vanessa seem to hit it off at first but a man in a black jacket and mask shoots and tries to kill them. Vanessa gives Daryl a gun and Daryl uses it to scare the man away. Daryl and Vanessa go to Daryl's apartment and Daryl tells Vanessa that she can stay as possible.
The next morning Daryl wakes up to a man, who puts a gun to his head. The man reveals himself as Billy, who is a friend of Vanessa. Billy tells Daryl that the gun is empty and that he was just testing him. Furious, Daryl hits Billy to the floor when Vanessa walks in and tells him that she has gotten him work as a limo driver. At first, Daryl refuses, since he doesn't like Billy, but he later changes his mind and takes the job. He meets a man named Herbert (Clifton Powell), who also works for Billy. Daryl and Herbert get along real well and find out that they have things in common. Later, Vanessa reads Daryl his future through tarot cards and Daryl realizes that the cards describe him in a lot of ways.
Vanessa and Daryl go to a club so Daryl can see how much things have changed since he went to prison. When they leave, the gunman from before shows up again and shoots at them. Daryl realizes that he gets shot at every time he's with Vanessa, leading him to believe that she knows something. Vanessa tells him that she suspects her ex-lover Ahmad is after her, but she doesn't know how he found her. Daryl doesn't believe Vanessa and refuses to speak or see her again, thinking that she will get him into trouble.
One late night, Daryl gets a call from Billy, who asks him to deliver a car for a client. The car gets a flat tire and Daryl opens the trunk to get the spare tire and finds a dead body in the trunk. While trying to change the tire, a police officer pulls up and asks him what happened. Daryl tries to explain what happened when the trunk opens up and the cop walks over to the car. Thinking that it will lead him to back to prison for life, Daryl picks up a tire iron and tries to knock the cop out, only to discover the cop close the trunk and does not find the body.
Daryl heads to Billy's office, beats him up, threatens him and quits the job. On the way back to his apartment, Daryl is arrested. Herbert walks in and reveals to Daryl that he is really a cop named Frank Lowden, who has been investigating Billy's business for months. He orders Daryl to go back on the job and that he is now working for him.
Daryl goes to Vanessa's apartment and orders her to tell him what has he gotten her into. Vanessa tells Daryl about Ahmad, the guy she mentioned before, and that he gave her a diamond that's worth half a million dollars. Daryl believes her but refuses to get involved in her situation, but he stays the night with her. The next morning, Daryl wakes up with blood on his hands and notices that Vanessa has been murdered. The police show up and Daryl escapes out the window. Daryl is now charged with killing Vanessa and now he has to find out who the real killer is. He goes back to his old hood and buys a gun from an old friend. Daryl goes to Billy's house and asks him about Ahmad, but Billy doesn't know who he is. Billy orders his bodyguard to come and hurt Daryl, but Daryl hides in the closet.
Suddenly, Billy's bodyguard is killed by Ahmad (Basil Wallace), a Jamaican mobster. Ahmad orders his men to tie Billy to a chair and he asks Billy how to find Daryl, since he is wanted for murdering Vanessa. Billy asks him why he's looking for Daryl and what can he do to help. Ahmad tells Billy a story about Vanessa, saying that she was his lover and she had helped him steal a case of diamonds. However, she betrayed him and took the diamonds for herself and disappeared and Ahmad has been looking for her since then.
Ahmad offers Billy one diamond and once again asks him where Daryl is. Billy tells Ahmad that Daryl is in the closet, but Ahmad doesn't believe him. Ahmad tells his men to kill Billy, thinking he is playing tricks on him, but instead he shows Billy a small bottle of sulfuric acid. Ahmad then tells one of his bodyguards to put a little drop of it on top of Billy's head, but the bodyguard accidentally puts too much and kills Billy. Ahmad orders his other bodyguard to check the closet. The bodyguard does and Daryl is hiding on top of the ceiling. As Ahmad and his men leave, Daryl exits the closet.
Daryl decides to leave town since he thinks he has nothing to stay for. He then pulls over and makes a call to Trisha's husband, Roger (LL Cool J). Roger tells Daryl that he and Trish had a fight and Trish left and has been gone for over a week. Daryl then asks Roger if can he speak to Jerome. He tells Jerome to stay out of trouble and hangs up. Thinking he will never be a part of his son's life, Daryl continues to leave town. He starts to have flashbacks and realizes he's making a mistake and goes back to L.A. Daryl goes to Vanessa's grave and digs up her body. He then pulls out a knife and cuts a piece of Vanessa's clothing and is shocked to discover that it is his ex-girlfriend, Trish.
Daryl follows Lowden to a house and waits for him to leave. He enters the house and sees that Vanessa is alive and she's the one who killed Trish and framed him in order to get Ahmad and his crew away from her. Daryl begins to take Vanessa to the police, but he is knocked out and handcuffed by Lowden. Lowden is revealed to be a crooked cop who was actually in on the whole thing with Vanessa and they both planned to sell the diamonds for money. Suddenly, Ahmad and his crew kill one of the guards and confront Vanessa and Lowden.
As Daryl begins to wake up, Ahmad orders Vanessa to give him the diamonds. Daryl notices a lamp on a table next to him. Suddenly, Vanessa, Lowden, Ahmad and his crew have a big shootout as Daryl attempts to knock the lamp over and break it. The shootout involves everyone being killed except Daryl. Before Vanessa dies, she tells Daryl that she never stopped loving him, despite what she has put him through. Daryl takes a bag of money and calls Jake from a pay phone. As Daryl explains the whole situation to Jake, he tells them that Ahmad and his crew were the ones who shot at him and Vanessa twice. However, Jake tells Daryl that Ahmad didn't know where Vanessa was until he heard that she was dead. Shocked, Daryl soon realizes that Vanessa was wrong and it wasn't Ahmad after all. Suddenly, the gunman from the last two times smashes into Daryl's car knocking him out.
As Daryl wakes up, the gunman finally confronts him, aiming his gun at him. Daryl asks who he is and the gunman reveals himself as a former security guard in the bank that his friend, Trip robbed. Trip also shot off the guard's private parts while robbing the bank, which is the reason why he has been stalking Daryl in order to kill him for revenge. Daryl tries to tell the gunman that it wasn't his fault and soon realizes that the gunman's actions resulted in Trish being killed. Angry, Daryl tries to attack the gunman but the gunman shoots him in the river below and commits suicide. Daryl suddenly comes back up and is still alive, due to the bulletproof vest he bought from a friend. With the money he took from Vanessa, Daryl is now the owner of his own club and his son, Jerome, lives with him. The film ends with Daryl saying: "Life is just a game, but to win you gotta avoid getting caught up."

Tags: paranormal, revenge, murder, flashback

Review:
Bad luck and poor choices.
This is got to be one of the most confusing urban thrillers I have ever seen.
A young man did a five year bid after being involved in a bank robbery thanks to his coke-head buddy.
Daryl plans were to open a nightclub and had a major set back that sent him to prison because of the bank robbery.
But when he got out he hooks up with a fortune teller that maybe change his life around.
Though whenever they were together someone was out to kill him.
Daryl played by Bokeem Woodbine had only wanted to get his life together so he can get back into his son's life and presume to open a nightclub.
Through all the mayhem in the movie he still achieve his goal.
Not a bad ending for a hood movie without the star dying..
A fresh take on the traditional "wrong man" theme.
Director Scott's debut leads us through a well paced maze of mystery.
He keeps our interest by injecting unpredictable twists and turns throughout.
A brave effort that goes against the formulaic grain of the majority of Hollywood releases..
Best One-Liner Ever.
"Caught Up" had that low budget feel but the low key and well paced mystery kept my attention.
Bookem Woodbine (Daryl) was refreshing as a ex-convict trying to go straight but every turn in the road ahead seems to lead him closer back to jail.
Bookem Woodbine has a very deep baritone voice like Earl Jones, and his delivery is rough at times but he was genuine.
I thought this movie was going to be a yawner early on until the part where Daryl barks "I ain't going down like no punk!"  That was a delivery of a one-liner comparable to "I'll be back" by Arnold.
Cyndia Willams (Vanessa) was very pleasing to the eye as the mysterious, seductive woman that plays Daryl as the fool.
She is the other reason to watch this movie.
Also, some other notable guest cameo is made the Candy Man, Snoop Doggy Dog, and Ll Cool J of "Deep Blue Sea" (who didn't go down like a punk)..
Painful.
I went to this movie because i have been a long time fan of Tony Todd and Jeffrey Combs.
They had two of the smallest roles in the film.
The film was poorly written and poorly directed.
I can sit back and watch a stupid movie if it is entertaining, but this one wasn't.
I had to fight sleep in the theater.
I didn't expect much from Bokeem Woodbine so i was not disappointed with him.
Cynda Williams was dreadful.
I would have to say that she delivers one of the worst performances I have ever seen.
Joseph Lindsey was the only enjoyable part.
His performance was hilarious, and yet he has gone on to do nothing else.
So in short if you are thinking of seeing this movie, it would be less painful to castrate yourself..
Another dust-collector on videostore shelves..
A poorly written urban crime drama that would have worked better as a sketch in HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE, CAUGHT UP stars Bokeem Woodbine as an ex-con trying to go straight.
Shortly after his release from prison, he meets Trish (Cynda Williams, whose mediocre performance is in sharp contrast to her impressive work in ONE FALSE MOVE), who's, of all things, a psychic being pursued by an evil Rastafarian from whom she stole a huge diamond.
Instead of staying the hell away from this apparently high-maintenance love interest (she's beautiful, you see) and trying to reconnect with his former squeeze, he agrees to help her.
Every stereotype and cliché is used, as well as howlingly bad dialogue ("Nobody was waiting for me but a dude named destiny") and the perfunctory hip-hop cameos.
This film seems to have been made solely to promote its accompanying soundtrack, but with hardly any rap music included in the movie, what exactly was the point of all this?.
Good.
It was basically a decent movie.
The plots keep flipping on you.
The first part is silly, but what can you say about the 'hood'?
That acid on the head was a bit much though.
And they never let us know how the fortune teller finds him.
She had to know about him.
Glad to see that he was able to finally open his club and get his son..
Bokeem Woodbine's Lone Effort.
I liked the movie, despite the critic's abhorrence toward the movie.
I can see Bokeem Woodbine's acting potential stretched even further.
Yet, Cynda Williams role in the movie may be the culprit for the critic's actions.
I didn't like her all that much, and her acting was a bit off.
Though, I believe that her purpose in the movie was to fulfill its "Sex-sells" promise.
But, basically all she is was just a pretty face.
This movie was pretty much all Bokeem Woodbine, as Daryl Allen's journey towards getting his life back together, without getting "Caught Up" of course..
Surprisingly well-structured plot; sharp writing overall.
Gems sometimes crop up in the most surprising places.
"Caught Up" provides the pleasures of a well-structured plot, especially the payoff one gets when something brought up earlier means something important (even clever) later, e.g. the identity of the hitman.
Combine these tasty plot twists with good acting and good dialogue, and you've got a  movie worth staying up to watch on cable.
So bad it's good.
The whole idea of taking such film noirs as "Double Indemnity" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and giving them a modern urban twist sounds quite intriguing.
Unfortunately, in the case of "Caught Up," the execution is poor.
First issue: the casting of Bokeem Woodbine as the lead.
Woodbine has been in other urban films like "Menace 2 Society" and "Jason's Lyric," and he wasn't bad in some of those supporting roles.
He just isn't cut out for being a leading man.
I can tell he wasn't perfectly comfortable with carrying the film on his own two shoulders.
The problem with his flat performance is that his face rarely changes expression and he delivers every line like he's constipated.
His emotions don't come naturally to him, and as a result his performance is totally strained.
The rest of the cast is pretty good.
Cynda Williams is beautiful to look at.
Jeffrey Combs has an amusing cameo.
The script is ludicrous, as it's full of way-too-odd coincidences and implausible plot twists.
I can tell that the director Darin Scott was very passionate about this project and very much inspired by those great noirs of the past, but his direction is over-the-top.
He explains, in his DVD commentary, that he used a hyper-realistic approach since it's narrated by the main character and people tend to embellish details when telling stories - especially ones as spectacular as this one.
His reasons are understandable, but the film still didn't work for me.
If there's anything good I have to say, "Caught Up" is worth some good laughs - mind you, you'll be laughing at it, rather than with it..
Review is right on.
For once, I agree 100% with the review of this movie.
It is dead on.
It was very poorly written although I was a bit intrigued by the twists and turns.
The plot was a deja vu, very similar to some of the old school blaxploitation movies, updated with a modern look, and language.
I did expect the soundtrack, which I didn't care for anyway in the extras on the DVD, to play more of a role, but I can't recall even hearing any music in the entire movie.
Maybe because the plot was so weak I didn't notice the music.I purchased the DVD for like $4.
It was in a bin with thousands of other DVDs collecting dust.
Seeing the beautiful Cynda Williams is worth the $4.
Just put the movie on mute and you're good to go!.
This movie has two rules- eject or dub over..
This is a silly movie that involves a man who has recently been let out of prison.
He meets a girl and gets mixed up in this silly underworld scenario, complete with renegade rastafarians and peel away facial disguises.
But its not as good as it sounds...
you have to put up with a lot of mediocre writing and overacting in order to get to any of the above-mentioned treats.
The story has all of these tricky twists that aim to add depth but really only complicate the already-ailing story.
To tell you the truth, the only reason I watched it was so that I could see the extremely short cameo by rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, playing the character "Kool Kitty Kat".One funny thing- you should watch for all of the funny faces that the actors make throughout the movie.
Its really strange how often it happens, and I don't know if it is a biproduct of the  overacting or an inside joke or what.
In any case, if you for some reason DO decide to watch this movie, its something to do..
Not a good movie and it was very confusing, too..
I watched this movie because it was included in a four pack that I bought at Walmart for five dollars.
I had been curious about this movie for quite some time and I remember seeing TV spots for it back in early 1998 and wondered what the movie was all about.I get the premise of a guy getting out of jail and wanting to go straight but couldn't because some things wouldn't let him.
However, there were so many twists and turns that I was not sure who really was the main antagonist and when you do, it turns out to be a really minor character and while I get the motive and reasons (Sort of) about the true villain, it just doesn't relate to the main plot.The only thing that saved this movie was seeing Cynda Williams naked and the soundtrack was also better than the film.
This movie sucked and I really wonder how this made it to theaters.
As much as I respect Bokeem Woodbine as an actor, I don't really think he is cut out for lead roles and this movie shows..
Clunky, but it has its moments..
A very typical set up - ex-con with a kid, wants to make a new start.
The main character's complete lack of bravado makes him an amiable enough lead, but it's not enough to save the film from clunky dialogue, and some clunkier acting.
However, there are some cinematically nice moments, and it's worth the rental price just to see Jeffrey Combs' hysterical, and very...
memorable...
cameo..
Poor plot line; weak acting..
The general look of the film, set design, locale appear as  cheap.
That coupled with a poor plot line and weak acting made this somewhat uninteresting, with the exception of the acting of Cynda Williams.
The obligatory sex-scene was not necessary.
Her acting style was smooth and confident.
All of the actors could have done better with a better script.
Sorry..
Seen it all before..
This was pretty nice, though absolutely everything is seen before.
The plot thins out towards the end, after a bland start.
Of the characters I'd like to pull out "Vanessa" for her good looks, and "Billy" for a good performance.
The rastas are, on the other hand, just plain silly.
Watch this movie if you have nothing better to do.
Screwed Up. Caught Up is bad..really, really bad.
It looks like it was done by amateur and with the exception of competent cinematography everything else about it blows.The story: Darryl Allen(Bokeem Woodbine) is having the worst luck ever.
He loses his moronic friend to a high speed chase accident.
He meets a mysterious woman named Vanessa Dietrich(Cynda Williams) who gets him in the middle of a scandal involving pilfered diamonds from a Jamaican mobster.
He is forced to work for a fruity and shady limousine owner named Wild Bill.
He befriends one of the guys at this job who ends up being an undercover cop named Frank Lewdon(Clifton Powell)posing as some unfortunate bum named Herbert.
On top of all that he keeps getting shot at by somebody(who I will reveal later in this review).You know a movie is in trouble when the cameo appearances by Snoop Dogg and LL Cool J are the best thing about it.
You know a movie is in trouble when a sex scene involving Cynda and Bokeem is better than the rest of the movie.
The acting is awful.
Bokeem Woodbine was great in Jason's Lyric, Panther, Strapped, Gridlock'd etc but he stinks here.
Its not his fault.
The script is a terrible one that causes for him to profusely overact at every scene.
The only scene he fared well in was the scene where he talks to his son over the phone.
Bokeem's performance elsewhere in this movie was hammy.
Now, I love Clifton Powell but he gives the worst performance of his acting career as the unscrupulous undercover Frank Lewdon.
The interrogation scene where he spits back in Daryl Allen's face and slaps him around is laughable to a fault.
Having Cynda Williams play both Trish and Vanessa made the movie all the more confusing.
As a matter of fact that is the biggest flaw of Caught Up: its confusing as hell from start to finish.
The film gets hysterically bad and worse as it progresses.
It has plot holes big enough to fit the state of Texas in.
Let me give you two examples of the huge holes in this story: Vanessa murders Trish and puts her dead body next to Darryl in a motel.
Question: How does she know where Trish stays?
Plot hole #2: Darryl is constantly getting shot at and in the end it turns out to be the same cop his friend shot in the groin earlier in the movie.
Question: how does this wacky cop know where to find Darryl at?
These are the few examples of the many plot holes in Caught Up. A movie so bizarre that it makes you wonder if the director and writer was sloshed while he wrote this tripe.
There is a reason why Darin Scott fell off the map after this movie.
Caught Up is confusing, jumble mess of a movie that adds to the negative stigma attached to low budget movies.
Some low budget movies can be good but this movie is not one of the exceptions.
Stick with the soundtrack.
Its more satisfying than this stinker.