Laws of Gravity, which was made for the vast sum of $38,000 in 11 days by writer/director Nick Gomez, clearly owes its main debt to David Mamet and Martin Scorsese.
Set on the streets of Brooklyn, it has a group of post-adolescent friends searching for a way out of nowhere and one in particular, who has failed to answer a court summons, getting deeper and deeper into the pit. The resultis predictable violence and a lesson learnt too late.
The film is as talkative as El Mariachi is determined that actions will speak louder than words and what Gomez attempts to accomplish is the kind of relity that Mean Streets actually managed to transcend.
What the film achieves is a stunning if rather grinding protrait of a posse of small-time hucksters who are no better that society makes them and sometimes worse. Gomez is good on group loyalties, on the way their women have to put with macho posing disguising weakness, and he also grades his characters according to their maturity and awareness with considerable skill.