Waist Deep

Waist Deep
Film poster
Directed by	Vondie Curtis-Hall
Produced by	Ted Field
Screenplay by	Vondie Curtis-Hall Darin Scott
Story by	Michael Mahern
Starring	Tyrese Gibson Meagan Good Larenz Tate Kimora Lee Simmons Jayceon Terrell Taylor
Music by	Denaun Porter Terence Blanchard Howard Drossin
Cinematography	Shane Hurlbut
Editing by	Terilyn A. Shropshire
Studio	Intrepid Pictures
Distributed by	Rogue Pictures
Release dates	June 23, 2006
Running time	87 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$21,344,312

Waist Deep is a 2006 drama-action film directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall, starring Tyrese Gibson and Meagan Good. It is loosely based on the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, including some similar subplots including the two main characters on the road, trying to avoid police, and committing bank robberies.

Plot

Ex-con Otis (Tyrese Gibson), or "O2" as he was once known on account of his ability to vanish from a crime scene like oxygen, has done his time and is now determined to stay out of trouble and never leave his young son, Otis, Jr. (played by Vondie Curtis-Hall's young son, Henry Hunter Hall), ever again.

When O2 shows up late to pick Junior up from school one afternoon, he swears that he will always come back for Junior. That promise is put to the test just moments later when O2's vintage 1960's Chevrolet Impala SS Lowrider convertible is stolen from him at gunpoint in the middle of a crowded Southland intersection — with Junior in the back seat.

O2 chases the car and gets into a nasty gun battle with the carjackers — circumstances that then make it possible for O2 to go to the police — but to no avail.

O2 does, however, catch up with Coco (Meagan Good), a woman who sells stolen suits on the streets for a thug known as P Money (Julius Denem). O2 knows she is the one who marked him for the carjacking, and he forces her to help him retrieve Junior. Lucky (Larenz Tate), Otis' unreliable cousin who works for Big Meat (Jayceon "Game" Taylor), the brutally vicious leader of the Outlaw Syndicate, also offers to help.

After a few hours on the street, Lucky comes back with some bad news: Junior has fallen into Meat's hands, and Meat (the main antagonist of the film) is demanding that O2 deliver $100,000 by midnight the following night, or Junior will die. Otis claims that he has no money, but Meat thinks otherwise: Meat was once O2's partner in crime, and he thinks O2 is still holding onto the $100,000 they made off their last job together — the job that got O2 six years in prison.

Desperate to raise the cash, O2 comes up with a plan: he and Coco will rob P Money's and Meat's own operations, staging it to look like the one is stealing from the other, and thereby triggering a gang war that will hopefully eliminate both and help O2 and Coco rescue Junior. After a successful robbery of one of the Big Meat's locations, O2 and Coco come across a set of safe deposit box keys belonging to numerous banks in the area. The next day with time wearing thin, they stage a number of bank robberies and are able to retrieve expensive jewellery, which Lucky offers to get rid of eager to prove his worth. When Lucky takes the jewelry to Big Meat unknowing that it belongs to Big Meat, Lucky is forced to set up a meeting between himself, O2, and Coco, with Big Meat along to end O2 once and for all.

They take a car to an alley and give him the money. It is then revealed that Big Meat never intended to let Junior live, as he signals one of his men to kill Junior. Lucky sees this and tackles him as the man shoots many shots, one shooting Lucky in the side of the chest. O2 kills Meat's men, leaving only Meat. He then proceeds to shoot O2 but has no shots remaining. O2 shoots and kills him and retrieves Junior.

On the road, they stop at a gas station to attend to Lucky's wound. O2 tells Lucky that they will get him to a hospital, but he realizes that Lucky has died. Swerving off the road, they are chased by the cops. O2 hides in a parking lot and tells Coco that she must take Junior and go to the Mexican border while he outruns the cops. As Junior and Coco escape, O2 is tailed by the cops. They run him to a dead end where the lake is. O2, realizing he has no choice, drives straight into the water.

In Mexico, Coco and Junior are living in a house on a beach. They are walking on the beach when Junior sees something in the distance. He and Coco find that it is O2, who has escaped the ocean and come back to them, as he promised. They then reunite.

Cast

Box office

Waist Deep grossed $9,404,180 from 1,004 theaters with a $9,366 average in its opening weekend. Altogether, the film grossed $21,353,303, making it a commercial flop.^[1]

Awards and nominations

• Film: Outstanding Hip-Hop Movie, (Nominated) BET Hip-Hop Movie Awards
• Tyrese Gibson: Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor, (Nominated) Black Movie Awards
• Meagan Good: Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress, (Nominated) Black Movie Awards, Choice Breakout Performance (Female), (Nominated) Teen Choice Award

References

External links

• Official website
• Waist Deep at allmovie
• Waist Deep at the Internet Movie Database
• Waist Deep Production Notes