Bomb the System (2003)

32% of critics liked it
(22 reviews)
81% of users liked it
(1,268 ratings)

A young man with a troubled past expresses himself through street art in this independent drama. Anthony (Mark Webber) is a 19-year-old kid living in New York City who was introduced to "bombing" -- graffiti art sprayed on public walls when the cops aren't looking -- by his older brother. When his… More A young man with a troubled past expresses himself through street art in this independent drama. Anthony (Mark Webber) is a 19-year-old kid living in New York City who was introduced to "bombing" -- graffiti art sprayed on public walls when the cops aren't looking -- by his older brother. When his brother died, Anthony took up bombing himself, and with the help of his pals Justin (Gano Grills) and Kevin (Jade Yorker) he does murals under the street name "Blest," while struggling to avoid the NYPD's anti-graffiti Vandal Squad. Anthony's mother (Donna Mitchell) is after him to quit bombing and attend art school, while his girlfriend (Jaclyn DeSantis) wants to get out of New York, and would like him to join her. However, it takes a run-in with Bobby Cox (Al Sapienza), a Vandal Squad cop with a hair-trigger temper, to push Anthony into making a decision about his life. Bomb the System was the first feature film from writer and director Adam Bhala Lough, who was only 23 years old when the picture was made. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: R, 1 hr. 31 min.
Directed By: Adam Bhala Lough
Written By: Adam Bhala Lough
Genres: Drama, Action & Adventure

In Theaters: May 7, 2003 Wide
On DVD: Oct 11, 2005
Studio: Palm Pictures

Critic Reviews

Ty Burr, Boston Globe
Visually dazzling and dramatically trite -- it's virtuoso piffle.
Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter
Notable mainly for its hallucinatory, tripped visuals, which go a long way toward compensating for a less-than-riveting narrative.
David Rooney, Variety
A richly textured drama with an angry poetic edge that gets inside the obsessive subculture of New York graffiti artists.
Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News
Preachy and single-minded, populated by a world of sympathetic heroes and hissable villains.
Lou Lumenick, New York Post
A mild, slow-moving drama that belatedly tries to argue that graffiti writers are political artists, not an urban blight.
Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times
Lough's impressive, if uneven, debut feature captures the adrenaline rush and contradictory nature of the simultaneously creative and criminal activity but stumbles in its attempt to justify it as an art form.
Eric Monder, Film Journal International
The story is so loosely developed and devoid of suspense, it barely seems to exist.
Jules Brenner, Filmcritic.com
I came out of this wishing the paint can crowd would settle for tattoos.
Tom Keogh, Seattle Times
Thoroughly fails to convince that its handful of New York characters known as 'bombers,' graffiti mongers futilely yearning for immortality via nightly despoiling of public and private property, is of any tragic interest.
Sean Axmaker, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The film half-heartedly paints their actions as rebel-chic heroism even when it has all the integrity of tomcats spraying outside their yards...
Tim Cogshell, Boxoffice Magazine
A didactic ode to a lifestyle that makes little sense, no matter the darkly romantic rebel-with-a-cause ideas associated with what is essentially an act of vandalism.
Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide's Movie Guide
In the end it's all seductive surface and no substance, but Lough has a bold eye and a vivid sense of uniquely urban beauty.
Timothy Knight, Reel.com
A flashy but numbingly hollow compendium of Trainspotting-inspired visual gimmicks, Lough's tale of New York City 'bombers' is formulaic in the extreme.