Put the clock on ‘em

The death of Bobby Fischer gives me the perfect excuse to talk about Fresh, one of the great lost movies of the 1990s. The hero, Michael (Sean Nelson), is a young drug courier whose calm attitude and watchful intelligence are appreciated by the local drug lords, who want to bring him into their operations. What he does instead is start playing them off against each other, applying a gift for strategy honed through games of Blitz with his father, Sam (Samuel L. Jackson), a hustler who makes money playing speed chess on the street. One of the few times Sam attempts to be fatherly toward Michael leads to the monologue shown above.

The title refers to the hero’s street name, but it also describes writer-director Boaz Yakin’s approach, which upended the Boyz N the Hood formula (already stale after only three years) by dispensing with the obligatory hip hop soundtrack for a fully orchestrated score. Yakin, a screenwriter making his debut as a director, is equally at home with action and with quiet, character revealing moments. The performances are flawless: Sean Nelson’s turn as Michael is almost frighteningly assured, and the film also showcases stellar work from Giancarlo Esposito, Ron Brice and N’Bushe Wright.

The film watches Michael as closely as he watches the rest of the world, and Yakin lets us hear the gears quietly humming inside his head as he plots to get revenge and spring himself and his sister from the ghetto. Chess strategies are used in subtle ways, but Michael’s chief advantage is that none of the bad guys believe a mere kid could pose a threat. And just as the viewer starts to balk at the thought of a boy working with such icy control, Yakin — and Nelson — give us a glimpse of the damaged soul behind the impassive face, in a closing scene that will break your heart.