I thought it was awesome all the cast were really believable and the story was great. Yes I recommend it. James Welch Henderson, Arkansas 11/14/2020

Bo (Jacob Latimore) is a street magician who does wondrous tricks because he has placed an electromagnet in his arm. Between this and dealing drugs for Angelo (Dulé Hill) is manages to care for himself and sister (Storm Reid). The drug dealer is our protagonist in this urban tale. Bo meets Holly (Seychelle Gabriel) as he sells Molly which turns into a folly as he cuts the product. Golly. (Sorry, but this is how I get my jolly.) The magic aspects turns what would be just another boring urban story into something interesting. I have my doubts that an electromagnet would have a powerful effect on aluminum, mercury/gold alloys and lead. Don't try this at home.

Guide: No sex, or nudity

Bo is a Los Angeles high school graduate who had to back out of a scholarship after his single-parent mother died so he could take care of his little sister in the semi-fantasy crime thriller "Sleight," but everything our hero does to shield his sister seems to endanger her. The problem with freshman writer & director J.D. Dillard's "Sleight" is simply that it is too slight. Dillard and co-scripter Alex Theurer have contrived the perfect set-up, but their gifted hero has it a little too easy when he must fend for himself. What we've got here is some David Cronenberg combined with some M. Night Shyamalan, but implausibility ruins the whole thing. Jacob Latimore makes a sympathetic enough character given his dire predicament. He must support his younger sister, Tina (Storm Reid of "12 Years a Slave"),and he seems to be acquitting himself well initially considering his predicament. During the day, he performs street magic that blows the minds of passersby. For example, Bo can levitate a ring and let a girl snatch it out of the air to prove no strings were attached!

Eventually, Dillard and Theurer reveal that the fantasy element is in name only. Bo has managed not only to engineer an electromagnet but also install it in his right shoulder with wires running under his skin so he can perform magic tricks. You would think that caring for his sister would be enough to keep him busy. A guy with this kind of ingenuity should have been able to do better than what he does to make ends meet. Indeed, he has an older lady, Georgi (newcomer Sasheer Zamataa),a considerate neighbor who helps Bo out when he cannot stick around with Tina late in the evening. Bo's night-time job is selling drugs for a volatile, hot-tempered drug dealer, Angelo (Dulé Hill of "The Guardian"),who is obsessed with respect. He insists that everybody must respect him. The question that the filmmakers neglect is how did Bo came to meet Angelo? These two don't run in the same circles so you wonder how he got drawn into Angelo's web of crime. Meantime, rival pushers infringe on Angelo's bailiwick, and Angelo goes ballistic. He interrupts Bo during a date and forces him to join his henchmen for a confrontation with these poachers.

About the same time all this is happening, Bo has met a girl, Holly (Seychelle Gabriel),with her own sordid story. Seems that Holly's grieving mom loves to beat up on her because of her daughter because a divorce has ruined her life. Eventually, by the 20-minute mark, our protagonist realizes to his horror that he must abandon the life of a drug dealer because Angelo requires him to take too many risks. Meantime, Bo has come up with an exit strategy. He plans to cut Angelo's drugs with vitamin C and acquire more than enough money to get out of the life. This cliché is pretty well worn, and Bo's best intentions land him in even hot water. Angelo learns Bo has been diluting the potency of his drugs, and he imposes an unrealistic settlement on Bo. Our protagonist must now come up with an absurd amount of money--$45 thousand—to square himself with Angelo. Although he pedals drugs galore, Bo is the most considerate dope dealer in cinematic history. His customers love him and share their innermost fears with him. Unfortunately, Bo's luck runs out, and he finds him in a no-win situation. Bo must even rob one of his customers to make Angelo's payment. Appropriately enough, Dillard and Theurer paint Bo into a corner that he cannot escape. Clearly, Bo cannot come up with the loot by the deadline that Angelo has set up, and Angelo is adamant about his deadlines. Angelo intends fully to kill Bo if necessary.

Dillard and Theurer gravitate to the land of fantasy, and they turn Bo into a low-rent, Marvel superhero, with enough power to blunt bullets in mid-trajectory and then hurl them back at his assailant. Mind you, Dillard and Theurer have fashioned an interesting film on a tantalizing premise, but their characters aren't fully developed, and some of the situations simply aren't convincing. Bo crosses the line early on when he goes with Angelo and his thugs to discipline a rival dealer. Angelo doesn't want to kill Maurice (Mane Andrew of "The Hot Chick"),but he wants to punish him. Angelo forces a reluctant Bo to hack off the rival dealer's hand with a meat cleaver. Since Bo cannot rely on his physical strength to triumph over his adversaries, he falls back on his semi-magical powers and turns himself into an urban Iron Man. The filmmakers try to make Bo's transition from harmless to heroic by letting him perform stunts that gradually increase his power with the electromagnet. Ultimately, "Sleight" takes its premise too far to be believable. Dillard and Theurer construct a house of cards, but everything collapses in terms of credibility on the way to its happy ending. The evil Angelo has kidnapped Bo's sister, and Bo means business when he soups up his electromagnet and confronts this unsavory villain.

The way that Dillard orchestrates the action compensates for the lack of credibility in plot. The narrative transitions are slick, and his "Maximum Rider" lenser Ed Wu creates atmosphere galore with his widescreen cinematography that underline the dramatic moments. Although it qualifies as a superficial, there is nothing slight about J.D. Dillard's direction.