Charm City Kings a fantastic coming of age story centered around street bike culture that brings some real dark and gritty moments.
Set in the world of street bike culture, Charm City Kings brings a fantastic coming of age story that will have viewers hooked from beginning to end. This movie had me crying within the first few minutes, before I even felt a connection to the characters, and that says a lot.
Charm City Kings tells the tale of Mouse who has lost his older brother in a tragic accident. He wants more than anything to join a group of dirt bike riders, Midnight Clique, and his mother and police mentor are trying as hard as they can to stop that from happening. I almost immediately joined forces with his mother, pleading while I watched the movie for him to not join. As a mom of two girls myself, I know that I would be just like her in this movie. Even if it is their dream and passion, after losing one child to it, why risk another?
As the story goes on we are quick to realize that Midnight Clique isn’t just about dirt bike racing — they actually run a drug operation as well. The movie gets darker and grittier as it goes on and Mouse has to decide between preparing for a positive future, or going down a dark road he may never be able to get off of.
While there are a couple of bike racing action scenes, that is not the focus of the film. It goes much deeper than that, even touching on fatherly figures for young boys who don’t have a biological father at home. I really wasn’t expecting the movie to try to dive so deep, but it was a pleasant surprise when it did.
There are some slow moments but overall I think the film delivered the lessons that it planned to. Charm City Kings clocks in at just over two hours, which is probably about twenty minutes too long. But that doesn’t make it not worth a watch. No major spoilers here, so check out Charm City Kings on HBO Max this month, I don’t think you will regret it.
About Charm City Kings
In this gritty coming-of-age drama, fourteen-year-old Mouse (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) desperately wants to join the Midnight Clique, an infamous group of Baltimore dirt-bike riders who rule the summertime streets. His older brother, Stro, was their top rider before his tragic death – a loss that consumes Mouse as much as his passion for bikes.
Mouse’s mom (Teyonah Parris) and his police mentor, Detective Rivers (William Catlett), work overtime to help the charismatic teen reach his full potential, but when the Midnight Clique’s leader, Blax (Meek Mill), takes the boy under his wing, the lure of revving his own dirt bike skids Mouse toward a road way past the straight and narrow.
Charm City Kings comes to HBO Max on October 8th!
Tessa Smith is a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved Film and TV Critic. She is also a Freelance Writer. Tessa has been in the Entertainment writing business for almost ten years and is a member of several Critics Associations including the Critics Choice Association, Hollywood Critics Association, and the Greater Western New York Film Critics Association.