Legacy Movie Review

It's Hoop Dreams without the hoops. Nickole Collins paints a stirring portrait of her family, an inner-city Chicago enclave that wrestles with violence, drugs, poverty, and illiteracy. Nickole pulls herself out of it -- mostly -- and documents the mostly successful attempts of her relatives to do the same. Of course, there's a lot of heartache (the shooting of her brother Terell opens the film), too. While it's obvious that Collins is an amateur with a Handicam (the film would have worked much better as a short subject), Legacy is nonetheless an inspiring look at pulling oneself out of the proverbial gutter.