Slam

Stylistically vivid to the brink of overheatedness, socially committed to the point of preachiness, director Marc Levin's fable stars Williams as a writer of slam poetry, a kind of rap-inflected spoken-word verse. He cannily struggles to get by in a Washington, D.C., ghetto, where the rule of law is scarcely more sensible than the rule of the streets. Both Williams' performance and Levin's pacing are sharp but dulled by a cutie-pie romantic subplot and the improbable sight of hardcore gangstas struck dumb by poetic wordplay.