San Francisco is usually photographed as a city of hills, bridges and impossible property prices. Splash City beneath all that. Its camera catches broken glass on the pavement, stolen cards changing hands and young men watching wealth pass within touching distance, knowing almost none of it will ever reach them. In Alex Ferrufino and Gilbert Anthony Milam Jr.’s bruising crime drama, Silicon Valley may be nearby, but it might as well be on another planet.
Milam, better known as rapper and entrepreneur Berner, co-directs and co-writes this tale of two brothers heading in opposite directions. Slim (Zach Sowers) has stepped away from street crime and is chasing a future in basketball. Juju (Reed Shannon), living in his older brother’s shadow, is drawn instead towards “bipping”, the Bay Area smash-and-grab trade built around car windows, quick money and an even quicker exit.
The territory may seem familiar: Brothers divided by circumstance, a mother trying to hold the family together, the promising athlete and the younger sibling seduced by criminal approval. But Splash City finds texture in the details. Alejandro Lalinde’s cinematography turns San Francisco after dark into a grid of neon, headlights and half-seen figures, while the soundtrack gives the streets their nervous pulse.
Shannon plays Juju as someone trying on versions of adulthood to see which one fits. There is something almost boyish beneath the hardened expression, particularly when he watches Slim receive the affection and hope he quietly wants for himself. Shannon lets that resentment sit beside genuine love, which makes Juju’s increasingly reckless decisions feel sad rather than foolish.
A crew reacts under blue nighttime lighting in a tense scene from Splash City.
“Slim has stepped away from street crime and is chasing a future in basketball.”
The film changes gear after violence tears through the family. Juju sinks further into street hustler Dolo’s orbit, searching for certainty in a world that has just stripped it away. Quincy “Galaxy” Brooks plays Dolo with an unnerving lack of stillness. His charm can curdle within a sentence, every laugh carrying the possibility of sudden aggression. Brooks attacks the role with enough volatility to make each appearance feel dangerous.
Berner and Ferrufino occasionally lean too heavily on the genre’s established furniture. Drug deals go wrong. Loyalty is tested. Guns appear whenever words run out. The script sometimes feels a little too led by crime films that have traveled the same route before it.
But the setting gives those conventions weight. This is a city where luxury boutiques and expensive jewelry sit alongside young men smashing windows for whatever has been left on a back seat. Crime isn’t presented as glamorous, even when its rewards briefly sparkle. The money vanishes quickly, but the damage does not.
Some of the supporting performances carry the roughness of first-time screen work, although that unevenness occasionally suits the film’s street-level atmosphere. Less successful is the treatment of its women. Juju and Slim’s mother, played by Hazel Green, is crucial to the emotional stakes but rarely given room beyond worry and grief, while other female characters remain at the edge of a story dominated by male pride.
By its final stretch, Splash City has gathered real force. The plot may be short on surprises, but Shannon makes Juju’s descent matter. His face, drained of bravado, carries the cost of every poor decision.
For a first feature, this is assured work. The Bay Area setting, propulsive soundtrack and two striking central performances give Splash City a character of its own. Gritty, confident and rooted in its surroundings, it brings fresh urgency to familiar crime-drama territory.
"…Silicon Valley may be nearby, but it might as well be on another planet."
