Jones plays a character nicknamed "Stick", which may or may not be short for "Sticky". I don't really know if that means he's sort of playing himself or a version of himself, but nobody actually calls him "Sticky Fingaz", so take that however you will. Stick is the head of a crew that gets robbed by a couple of thugs posing as cops, and the following series of retaliations and re-retaliations quickly escalates to all-out war between Stick and Black (Faison Love), his competitor. Unfortunately for Stick, his girl Heaven (Melinda Santiago) is pregnant and his cousin Phya (Fredro Starr) gets shot up during one of the gang fights. Trapped between a vicious cycle of drug-war chicken and considerations for his future, Stick is forced to think seriously about getting out of the game.

Obviously, every rhyme in the entire 90-minute movie can't be perfect, and I'm not exactly an expert on Sticky Fingaz or rap music in general, but I thought the flow in A Day in the Life was pretty good. Most of the actors in the movie are just that, actors, including Mekhi Phifer, Clarence Williams III, Bokeem Woodbine and more, but they all keep up with the pace to varying degrees. Even the eternally, tragically white Michael Rapaport is able to keep a beat afloat during his scenes. Speaking of the cast, TV fans will have plenty of familiar faces to spot, including Page Kennedy (U-Turn on "Weeds"), Nadine Velasquez (Catalina from "My Name is Earl") and several actors from "The Wire" (Michael K. Williams, Starr and Hassan Johnson).

The direction is pretty basic. I doubt Lionsgate sunk much more than a million dollars into this production, because it looks like it was shot in areas Jones could access for free, with minimal lighting. Sometimes it serves the film well enough; there's a nice mansion in the movie, and the airport scenes look fine, but when a high-up mob boss calls Black to yell at him, it looks more like a car dealership than a posh office building. Most of our main characters seem to have more money on hand than the movie cost, including not one but three different Hummers appearing in the film, and a scene where Stick buys a boatload of guns from a shady local arms dealer. When the guns go off, though, Jones sure goes all out on the blood spatters; pretty much every thug that gets gunned down gets a huge squib hit with plenty of spray.

The plot itself is tired and occasionally confusing, since rap isn't the most refined way to get exposition. There's a lot of talk about brotherhood, and the old "getting out" standby in which Stick decides that once he ties off some loose ends, he's going to leave the country with Heaven and go straight. I wouldn't dream of spoiling the ending, but the imaginatively named King Khi (Phifer), the deadliest of deadly assassins stands in his way, and Khi has convenient access to an internet file that contains exactly the information he needs to throw a wrench in Stick's plans.

And yet A Day in the Life is a highly entertaining and extremely watchable movie, because the plot and direction all take a backseat to Jones' central conceit, which is clever, interesting and different (I'm sure it's been done before -- they say everything has -- but it's the first one I've seen). Admittedly, it feels like it would have gone better as a bonus disc to a new Sticky Fingaz album comprised of songs from the movie than as a stand-alone feature film, but if you enjoy watching projects that are a little left of center, A Day in the Life is more than worth a look.

The DVD
A Day in the Life gets a fairly attractive but extremely basic, template-y cover. I like the white and red, which is probably the most noticeable thing about it, but the way the images are arranged on the back cover is about as straightforward as DVD artwork comes. There is no insert in the Eco-Box packaging, and the disc has the same artwork as the front cover.

The Video
Hopefully all future owners of this title have small televisions, because even if this 1.85:1 letterbox transfer was anamorphically enhanced, the movie would still look awful. The source appears to be standard-def retail digital cameras, so right off the bat you have jagged edges, washed-out color, low detail, burn-out, edge halos, interlacing and tons of artifacts, but the fact that this transfer is non-anamorphic really puts it in another league of failure. Just becasue A Day in the Life couldn't have looked much better doesn't excuse anything.

The Audio
There's some reasonably good bass and surround on the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on the DVD, but the low budget of the film again seems to hamper the possibilities. Most of the rap in the movie, intentional or not (I have no idea) only uses simple, basic production instead of full-blown effects and synthesizers you would normally hear in a radio single, which leaves the track feeling kind of sparse. It's not as bad as the non-anamorphic presentation, but it's not phenomenal either. English and Spanish subtitles are included, which I highly suggest turning on to avoid missing any of the lyrics.

The Extras
The main extra on this decidedly light disc is a short making-of featurette imaginatively titled The Making of "A Day in the Life" (7:08). Jones chats enthusiastically about the logistics of squib hits and gun safety and the need to resort to camera tricks to help deal with some of his actors' schedules. He's so enthusiastic, it's really disappointing that this featurette is so short and that the disc doesn't include an audio commentary. That said, there's a catch: at the end of the featurette, it says you can watch the "rest of the documentary" online at www.majorindependents.com. Seems like kind of a rip-off to me.

A music video (5:00) for Sticky Fingaz' "Debo the Game" is a weird, overdirected clip that may or may not have inspired the film in a sense (I don't know whether the movie or the video came first). Sticky Fingaz fans will probably like it. The movie's original trailer (1:39) is also included (Which looks more polished than the film itself), along with trailers for Belly, State Property 2, Weapons, O and Belly 2, which also play when you put the DVD in. In this interview I discovered in the course of surfing the net prior to writing this review, Jones mentions a deleted scene where he suffocates a woman using a dry cleaning bag that isn't on the disc. Gee, who wouldn't want to see that?

Conclusion
It's worth waiting until the price drops another five bucks (even the low ten dollar price point most stores will have for A Day in the Life feels high for no features and non-anamorphic video), but once it does, I recommend picking up a copy of this highly entertaining movie, if only because it must be seen to be believed.