Premiered at the New Directors/New Films Festival in New York, Laws of Gravity is a gritty and audacious addition to the milieu of 'male bonding among young hoods', a la Scorsese's Mean Streets (and particularly his first feature, Who's That Knocking At My Door). Twenty-eight-year-old director Nick Gomez (known for editing Hal Hartley's Trust) has made a gutsy verite debut. An audio-visual pinwheel — hand-held camera work seems to belie the film's title — with dense, overlapping dialogue underscored by the murmur of salsa.

A rough corner of Brooklyn is home to two small-time crooks who spend their days concocting schemes (nickel-and-dime stuff in a low-rent world) and giving grief. Their streetwise swaggers and tough-minded humour begin to fail them however, when an obnoxious cohort returns to the 'hood, with a trunk full of handguns, and the local scene starts to sour. Loyalties strain to the breaking point in a world were the rules are governed by an implacable meanness.