Squeeze

Robert Patton-Spruill's directing debut gets off to a promising start, with a deliciously uncomfortable scene involving three multiracial teens trying to hustle small change by pumping gas for customers at a self-service station in a rundown Boston suburb. But it quickly slides into TV movie of the week territory, the victim of its hackneyed premise and didactic, predictable screenplay about poor, vulnerable youngsters caught between extremes: a community-based volunteer program that looks a lot like workfare and the street life that revolves around dealing drugs. The film's look is pure NYPD Blue -- all jiggly SteadiCam -- and when the actors find cracks in...