The songs in the film will grab your attention, mainly because of the artists performing them: Solomon Burke, Etta James, Dr. John, Aaron Neville, Natalie Cole, and Richie Sambora, among others. This is an eye-catching list of talent that lends the film a great deal of legitimacy.
Even here, though, the filmmakers can't use world-class blues artists without making a key mistake. The mistake is putting music everywhere in the film. Everywhere. And that is not meant as a compliment. Great though many of the songs are, there isn't room enough in the film for all of them, especially when they're not connected to what's going on in the story. This makes for a lot of uneasy transitions, as the songs change the tone before the audience has a chance to catch up.
The ultimate effect of all this on the viewer is that by the time the new revelations and plot twists start popping up at the end of the movie, you just don't care about what's going on. It's already clear that the screenplay is not so much a script as it is an outline of a series of eclectic moments centered around dark streets and nightclubs. And the actors, unfortunately, cannot pick up the slack. The lead character, Chaz Davenport, has little or no characterization in the script. And unfortunately, Gabriel Mann doesn't show enough charisma to compensate. Bijou Phillips is good enough, but she's given very little to do; the only real development in her character is her predictable reaction to Davenport's new flame (Izabella Miko).
I don't know what director Rachel Samuels and screenwriter Wallace King were trying to accomplish. Knowing how they expected the film to work would help me understand why --at least in my opinion — it didn't.
Watching Dark Streets is like trying to read a coded message without knowing the code. You may see a few vague impressions, but you're ultimately helpless to determine what exactly the writer wanted to tell you.
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