The official 2020 trailer for Cut Throat City is out. Directed by Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, the upcoming heist action drama features T.I., Terence Howard, Wesley Snipes, Shameik Moore and Ethan Hawke, among others.
Set in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the film follows four childhood friends from the lower ninth ward struggling to get by. In a bid to get paid, the group turns to Shameik Moore’s character’s cousin – a gangster played by T.I. – who helps them rob a casino.
In a 2018 interview with HipHopDX’s Kyle Eustice, RZA talked about the film, drawing comparisons from the characters’ experiences to his own in Staten Island.
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“I felt like what these four guys was going through was similar to what we go through in my neighborhood,” he told DX. “Just being men who, based on environment and unfortunate conditions, sometimes is pushed to do acts of desperation.
“There’s so many young men in the penal system or in a pine box underneath the ground that could’ve been great artists, or great musicians, or professors, doctors or anything they wanted to be, but situations and conditions and environments forces them to take the wrong path. This story was touching on that, and I wanted to help bring it to the screen and I had the ability to do it and the writer trusted me to play with the draft and turn it into my own thing, and here we are.”
This is RZA’s third film as director. He made his directorial debut with 2012’s The Man with the Iron Fists – an homage to the martial arts genre starring Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu.
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In 2017, he directed the musical drama Love Beats Rhymes. The cast included Azealia Banks, Common, Jill Scott and Method Man. After the film’s mediocre release, Banks went on The Breakfast Club and labeled the Wu-Tang Clan vet “a dummy,” saying he was “coked out” and “not a talented director.”
Cut Throat City premieres at SXSW on March 14 and arrives in theaters April 10.
