Five Star

The writer and director, Keith Miller, establishes engaging characters but stifles their thoughts and emotions, sets up dramatic situations but avoids their practicalities and implications.

It's eye-opening to see an indie approach to this genre.

Keith Miller's Five Star makes its nonactors look like trained thesps and (in a good way) vice versa.

Slow and steady, and with remarkable assuredness, Keith Miller's "Five Star" plays mean-streets drama in the lowest of keys.

There's just not enough meat on these bones, and what meat there is has been thoroughly chewed over.

Keith Miller's modest drama Five Star is the kind of depiction the city sorely needs.

...worth pursuing.

Because of the heavy use of tropes, the documentary style and genre subversion are not enough to make Five Star feel urgent or authentic.

Five Star has the power to make anyone appreciate the life they have, and think about what it really takes to be a man.

Intimate, engaging and engrossing look at New York gang life and the charisma that it takes to bring in new recruits

It's consistently compelling, and develops a tension that doesn't feel forced, despite being rough around the edges.

The verisimilitude is a poke at the cliche-riddled work seen on television crime shows, but its lack of stylisation and mundane focus can leave you thirsting for, if not some drama, at least a tad more pizzazz.