I’ve been recommended to watch Snowfall by many of my friends. I’ve had it on my laptop for several months now but never bothered to start it because I didn’t think it was worth it. I was wrong. It IS worth it. One thing I’ll say though is that it doesn’t measure up to the hype people associated with it. I’ve seen people compare it to Power, and I’m honestly disappointed now seeing that this is what some people dared to compare to Power. Lol looks like I got in too straight forward.
Image from source and edited by me in canva
About the movie (The Plot)
Franklin is a black man in South LA trying to make ends meet the right way because of his mama’s disgust in the street life. He works at a liquor store earning small stable cash, but he sells weed on the side.
One day one of his customers is hosting a party and their coke supply runs out, so he tasks Franklin to be “the black guy” and go get them some weed. Franklin understands how things work on the street, so he’s not offended- be the black guy, sell the coke, and make the bank. Pretty simple.
The guy he’s directed to buy the coke (Avi) turns out to be a cray-cray dude. Crazy off the bat. Before he sells the coke to Franklin, he straps a vest on him with intentions to shoot at him and if he survived, then they’re in business. Lucky for Franklin, it was just a test, and he takes the vest off of him after he sees Franklin is bold enough to wear it.
Avi is shocked and annoyed to find out Franklin is trying to buy only $200, coins worth of coke. He tells Franklin he only sells big in Kilos to people with real money. In the heat of the moment, Franklin asks to be given a Kilo and promises Abi to return with the cash in 24 hours.
Problem is, you can’t run a coke operation as a one-man operation. So Franklin’s “cartel” is himself, his friends, his uncle and his wife. So La Familia. They go through the typical drug trouble as they try to keep expanding and getting bigger.
If you’ve seen the "him, him, her, him, bodies, bodies, bodies" short clip before, then you’ve seen a bit of Snowfall.
Franklin’s character
I have to admit that I freaking Looove Franklin’s character in the sense that he’s a focused and determined man. Don’t got no time for bitches or any of that extra stuff. He has his eyes on his money and he doesn’t get distracted. He demonstrates his focus several times, in one of the most crucial times when he’s getting foot-chased by cops. In that scene, you’d expect he’d let go of the bag of coke because it slowed him down. But nope, he ran WITH the coke.
You also see Franklin turn down several of Claudia’s offers to hook him up with a fine girl, and he re-iterates on several occasions that he’s about the money and not pussy.
But….
I have some preformed expectations of what African-American movies about drugs look like already thanks to movies like Power and Empire, and if I’m being honest, the drug operations I see run in this series appear mid as fuck to me (so far)
Everyone that has seen real African-American drug movies knows that there’s a hierarchy of power from the connect to distros, then corner boys to the customer. But these guys have put no effort into building their hierarchy. They make it look like a drug business is like some candy business you can run with a little bit of luck. Just a couple of wannabes with some experience selling weed on the corner.
Franklin doesn’t run into any real trouble with the cops, and you don’t see that black profiling working against him. Corner boys tend the corners IN BROAD DAYLIGHT in the middle of busy roads like they’re selling candy. Where’s that real fear of the cops showing up and busting your asses? The meetings at midnight and the coded locations? Like come on.
In the other shows, we see the top guys are so powerful that they literally have the cops in their palms, and so don’t get arrested easily. But in episode 1 of season 2, Avi’s house gets raided and by some low-level cops. It was honestly disappointing to see that someone supposed to be a boss like Avi, had to snitch his way out if prison.
Also over here, even though Franklin is the man in charge and running his operation, his authority seems to be undermined almost always. Matter of fact, I don’t even know whether he has any authority at all. His subordinates just do shit that blowback on his business and he lets shit slide every time. I’ve seen Franklin excuse some things I bet my ass Ghost wouldn’t excuse a fraction of. Like the way he took Kev’s bs throwing a fit about biscuit and his boy’s slaughter.
One thing I like about the series though is how they don’t only focus on Franklin and his side of the movie, but expand deep in to develop the plots of the other characters involved. In power and the likes, you don’t really understand the stories of guys like Felipe Lobos because the show doesn’t make room for them in the plot development. They only use them as side characters, but they could do a lot more with them in my opinion.
On Snowfall, the Mexicans have their part of the plot fully developed. So it combines both the narrative of African-American drug dealings and Mexican cartels. Kind of a Power/Queen-of-the-south combination.
One funny about the movie I can’t seem to stop laughing about is how much almost every black man in there is rocking an Afro like it’s a show from the 1990s. Holyshit! It seems I didn’t fully understand the timing behind the movie and never bothered to check it out. I just googled the show right now and realized the show actually is set to have happened in South Central Los Angeles the 1980s.
If you haven’t seen this series yet, you need to check it out. I don’t watch wack stuff and I definitely don’t review them.
You get to see an amateur drug lord toughen up, improve and expand his business and territory. Franklin Saint won’t disappoint.
Oh and PS, I only started this series a while ago and I'm currently at the second season, so take my words with a pinch of salt. Lol