How Gridlock’d exposed America’s bro­ken health­care system

If you’re among America’s poor­est cit­i­zens, the future of health­care will seem more than a lit­tle pre­car­i­ous right now. Espe­cial­ly giv­en the President-elect’s deter­mi­na­tion to dis­man­tle every key aspect of Obama’s Afford­able Care Act; yes, he real­ly did just recruit staunch Oba­maCare and abor­tion oppo­nent Tom Price to his cabinet.

Just nine days after Trump is inau­gu­rat­ed as the 45^th Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, Vondie Curtis-Hall’s crim­i­nal­ly under­rat­ed Gridlock’d turns 20. The film’s mock­ery of how Amer­i­can health­care mis­treats its weak­est, most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens feels more rel­e­vant today than ever before.

Set in Detroit, Gridlock’d shows Amer­i­ca in decay. Walls and fur­nish­ings look soiled; grot and grime appear to pour from the screen. The film focus­es on two work­ing-class junkies, Spoon (Tupac Shakur) and Stretch (Tim Roth), who decide to enter a drug reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme after their house­mate and fel­low jazz-cum-poet­ry band­mate, Cook­ie (a bril­liant­ly sassy Thandie New­ton), over­dos­es after try­ing hero­in for the first time on New Year’s Eve.

When Spoon and Stretch call an ambu­lance, Shakur’s char­ac­ter feels more com­fort­able lying to the oper­a­tor. He des­per­ate­ly pleads: ​“There’s a whole bunch of black peo­ple shoot­ing and talk­ing about rev­o­lu­tion. You bet­ter send some­one.” No one comes. By the time they final­ly get Cook­ie to a hos­pi­tal, an apa­thet­ic work­er is more con­cerned with get­ting Spoon to fill out forms. After being sar­cas­ti­cal­ly told he’s missed a box, he begs for a doc­tor, only to be told: ​“I’ll let the bitch die if you speak to me like that.”

Large­ly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, direc­tor Cur­tis-Hall – who has nev­er made a bet­ter film (he lat­er direct­ed Mari­ah Carey in Glit­ter) – based Gridlock’d on his own expe­ri­ences grow­ing up in Detroit. ​“One day my best friend, our bassist, and I were sit­ting around and decid­ed that maybe we could actu­al­ly play bet­ter if we weren’t stoned all the time,” he revealed upon the film’s release. ​“The next day, we went to try and get into rehab and we end­ed up wan­der­ing around from place to place, no one giv­ing us any help.” Gridlock’d is sil­ly at times, with Roth and Shakur’s many hap­less run-ins with Blax­ploita­tion-lite vil­lain and drug deal­er D’Reper (men­ac­ing­ly played by Cur­tis-Hall him­self), paint­ing their dou­ble act like some sort of street-smart Lau­rel and Hardy. But the film’s bru­tal satire of bureau­cra­cy is where it real­ly shines.

Roth and Shakur are passed around coun­cil build­ings like rag dolls, with their gov­ern­ment mak­ing it abun­dant­ly clear it doesn’t care for junkies get­ting clean. In the film’s best scene, a blind, elder­ly war vet­er­an (played by Howard Hes­se­man) trash­es the lob­by of the Depart­ment of Social Wel­fare with a piece of met­al hav­ing grown tired of being treat­ed like a sta­tis­tic. He iron­i­cal­ly screams ​“name, rank, ser­i­al num­ber” over and over, as desk shrap­nel flies into the air. And as his superbly named Rot­tweil­er ​‘Nixon’ aggres­sive­ly patrols the build­ing, attack­ing and forc­ing work­ing class peo­ple to cow­er on top of desks, it isn’t hard to imag­ine the par­al­lels to what Tom Price and Mike Pence might soon do to Planned Parenthood.

With the con­cept of rehab look­ing more and more unlike­ly, Stretch, already suf­fer­ing from a gun shot wound, and Spoon decide that the best way for them to get clean is to end up in hos­pi­tal to ​“get off these streets”. In a back alley, Shakur asks Roth to stab him, com­i­cal­ly point­ing to a part of his tor­so that he’s con­vinced will not result in any dam­age to major organs. As they final­ly stag­ger into the hos­pi­tal wait­ing area, drip­ping blood all over its pris­tine floors before col­laps­ing, both men are sniffed at by doc­tors like stray ani­mals, only to be deemed not sick enough for a hos­pi­tal bed. Des­per­ate­ly sit­ting togeth­er on a bench in one of the film’s clos­ing shots, their return to hero­in feels inevitable.

The cen­tral duo’s chem­istry is tremen­dous, with Shakur obvi­ous­ly in awe of the clas­si­cal­ly trained Roth, and the British actor equal­ly struck by the raw mag­net­ism of his co-star. Inter­viewed ahead of the film’s release a then 25-year-old Shakur, who had found him­self on the wrong side of the law many times before, spoke of the role like it was his career peak: ​“Play­ing Spoon works as I’m a con­sul­tant for the bureau­cra­cy, I know all their run-arounds. I’m still going to court now for things that hap­pened when I didn’t have hair on my face.” Trag­i­cal­ly, Shakur’s bru­tal mur­der in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing four months before the film’s release derailed its impact on pop­u­lar culture.

Gridlock’d clos­es with the three cen­tral character’s fic­tion­al band ​‘Eight Mile Road’ per­form­ing in a dim­ly-light­ed club. Newton’s poet Cook­ie spits at the audi­ence ​“If you don’t have insur­ance, it ain’t noth­ing but sur­vival of the fittest,” while bass play­er Shakur pas­sion­ate­ly raps: ​“Life is a traf­fic jam, I’m stuck, when will you realise you’re fucked?” Should Trump dis­man­tle Oba­maCare in 2017 as pre­vi­ous­ly promised, then America’s poor could come to that real­i­sa­tion soon­er than you think.