The Scrapper: Review

3rd December 2021

Jake (Bari Kang) is a former criminal and now lives the simple life of a scrapper. He’s also Punjabi and feels conflicted by his heritage and the country in which he lives. However, what keeps him going are his girlfriend, Kitt (Ava Paloma) and the thought of becoming a father once their child is born.

Jake is also the sole carer for his brother, JB (Gugan Deep Singh) who has a learning disability and has stayed close to him all his life.

Then one day, Jake is brought back into the fold of his criminal past with the promise of one last job that will set him free from his past and look after his future. The trouble is when the robbery goes wrong, Jake finds himself caught between warring Mexican and Punjabi gangs as he once again must find a way out.

The Scrapper is a violent crime drama directed, written by and starring Bari Kang. Taking a somewhat unseen part of American life, Kang creates a gritty world filled with gangsters, tense action and a heart at the centre. It’s just a pity that besides the unique setting and diverse cast of characters, it seems that audiences may have seen this before.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with giving the audience what they want and the satisfaction of knowing what you’re going to get can be fulfilling. However, it seems that The Scrapper doesn’t really have an identity of its own and borrows from many other familiar gangster movie tropes.

There’s also the cliché of the protagonist who’s portrayed as a caring and noble man because he has a disabled sibling.

Kang creates a world in a realistic setting with the use of real locations and mostly authentic casting. However, because the behaviour of such characters has been seen in many other movies, it doesn’t seem to have much to say on its own. Kang does a good job and has certainly written and directed a movie which takes characters that most audiences may not consider for this kind of film. Unfortunately, once the audience may start to realise what they’ve seen before, there are little surprises.

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