I rented this DVD because it said on the back that it was made by the “same team” that brought us Crash. Since Crash has been one of my all-time favorites, I thought I would be treated with the same level of intelligence and excellence, nope!

This is basically a 115 minute hip-hop music video with almost a “guest appearance” from Bill Paxton. If Haven had entered a camera technique contest, she could have won the “Golden Hand Camera” award. But thousands of clever close-ups, breathless editing, and a beautiful island don’t make a movie.

The story is mind-bogglingly simple and hackneyed. Two con artists (in Florida?) evade the feds and jump to the Cayman Islands. Bill Paxton is one of the bad guys who brings his teenage daughter to the island and an obscene amount of cash wrapped around her body.

At that point, the plot breaks and we are introduced to a whole new set of characters consisting of a poor fisher boy, a beautiful black girl (bearing a strong resemblance to Thandie Newton from Crash) who comes from an upper-class family, and his jealous brother who would stop at nothing to stop his sister’s affair with the working-class boy from the wrong side of the marina.

This “Caribbean Romeo and Juliet” theme is suffocated under layer upon layer of drugs, alcohol, endless parties around pools where anything goes, lots of swearing, swearing and posing by an army of flashy gang members with too much testosterone for their own good. … going round and round in endless wash cycles.

And what about the character of Bill Saxton and his daughter? I think at some point he finds himself on the receiving end of a gun and agrees to part with his money.

And to the boy Romeo who loves the girl Juliet something bad happens but in the end both main characters have a Socratic conversion and deny all drugs and violence.

So we stand there twisting in the gentle trade winds with no closure in sight, but the music still playing in the background if it’s any consolation.

I have a feeling that, long after the most discerning moviegoers got up in the middle of this Crash copycat and went home, the Haven crew was still partying in the Caymans.