Like a feature length hip hop video, Hype Williams' Belly is filled from beginning to end with gangsterism and violence, beautiful camera work and imagery, and rap stars. Nas and DMX play Sincere and Tommy, two gangsters trying to make it big in the drug game and after some mild success they go their separate ways. Unfortunately the film suffers from bad plotting, pacing and editing which combines to make a very convuluted and medicore gangster movie. I take nothing away from Hype Williams. The movie is visually beautiful and technically stunning but the story itself come off as being too dry and the characters lack depth, a depth that keeps the audience from relating to the characters.

For sheer visual pleasure, Belly is superb and Hype Williams shows promise as a feature film director but the holes throughtout Belly make this effort fairly bland.