Great Film overall

Beautiful, moving film.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I've seen this movie twice and got more out of it the second time around. Although some people might shy away from the topic, there is more to meet the eye, literally, than just the obvious. There are excellent performances by a number of talented actors but the story line and arc of the heroes is what gives the effort dynamic life. Anyone who has ever been a teenager knows that things could have gone off the rails a number of times. This circular, rising tension gives the plot life. There is "Life, and Nothing More" as a model for a window into a world you might not be that familiar with. This movie was several years ahead of the issue of "spacial profiling". There is a lot to be proud of in giving witness to a depiction of the human struggle. Many of the members of the audience were stunned by how honest this movie was. There were SEVERAL audience reactions of shock and understanding which validated the craft of its creation. I know a number of them talked about for days afterwards. How many movies does that happen with, nowadays? If it is playing in your area go see it, you won't regret it. This is an HONEST, dedicated, small film American effort; we'll be hearing more from the Director, I'm sure!

What we saw in this film is about a young black teenager struggled to deal with the daily nothingness and hopelessness without any possible way to get out of it. His lacking of a father figure to guide or pull him through the growing pain stage is just a wishful thinking. His mother, a rustic, loud-mouth, sexual thirsty low level woman with big hips is a very typical woman and mother who got nothing, no man in her life to support her and her family. The boy got a very little sister still needs day care, it only means the man of the house just took off before the little girl was born. There's really nothing to tell about the whole film about anything, just a dreary hopeless life and low living standard of an average scene of nowadays America, not just specifically what the black people or their families got to deal with, most of the whites also like the blacks facing the same and inescapable situations day by day. They are not even what we called "Middle Income Families", I'm very curious about how these people pay their utilities bills, property taxes. Of course, based upon what we saw in this film, they obviously don't have to pay any income tax since they are definitely low income people. The whole film is very depressed to watch. We don't smell any MONEY in it. Guess if we could see some beautiful and rich black people and what the could afford like we see daily in the TV commercials, these God-awful situations about this boy and his family won't even exist. It's the poverty that has affected almost anything in Life & Nothing More. You don't need to make a film so repeatedly reiterating it. Although money couldn't buy anything, but at least let's have some first.