Tenants, The

Aroview: Gripping drama about two ambitious writers - one black, one white - who spar in an abandoned New York tenement block.

McDermott plays a struggling writer, the last legal tenant of a crumbling edifice under pressure to sell by the landlord (Cassel). Snoop Dogg arrives as an edgy outsider to share tales before things become complicated when his girlfriend appears. Ranging between a one-set character piece to over-orchestrated race-centric speech making, this is a cerebral dissertation that gradually erupts into action, and offers a sometimes bizarre look at life in the big city.