Above the Line is coming out June 26, and the premise alone is enough to get me interested. Six Hollywood hopefuls team up to steal the Best Picture awards from a producer who wronged them. It is a heist movie set inside the film industry, which is a combination that should not work but sounds like it absolutely could.
The director has described it as a love letter to 90s crime noir comedies, specifically citing Swingers and Pulp Fiction as reference points. That is a bold pair of films to invoke. Swingers nailed the feeling of being young and hungry in Los Angeles, and Pulp Fiction redefined what crime stories could look like on screen. If Above the Line can capture even a fraction of that energy while adding its own Hollywood insider twist, it could be something special.
Sophia Ali leads the cast, and if you have seen Uncharted, you know she can hold the screen. Cedric the Entertainer rounds out what sounds like an ensemble built around chemistry and comic timing. The interesting wild card here is Logic, the rapper, who contributed music and helped write the film. Musicians crossing into film is always hit or miss, but as a writer and composer rather than a lead actor, that feels like a smarter use of his creative instincts.
The film premiered at the Sun Valley Film Festival last December, which is a good sign. Festival premieres give smaller films a chance to build word of mouth before they hit wide release, and the fact that it is getting a theatrical date in June suggests there is some confidence behind it.
What draws me to this one is the setting. Hollywood loves making movies about itself, but most of them are either too reverent or too cynical. A heist film that uses the awards machine as its target has the potential to be genuinely fun while still saying something about how the industry works. The people who get shut out, the politics behind who wins, the absurdity of the whole system. There is real material to mine there.
This feels like a group watch movie. The kind of thing you throw on with friends, not because it is going to change your life, but because everyone in the room is going to have a good time. Sometimes that is exactly what you want from a night at the movies. A sharp premise, a solid cast, and a tone that does not take itself too seriously. June 26 is the date to mark.
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