Lifestories: Families in Crisis (TV Series) P.O.W.E.R.: The Eddie Matos Story (1994) User Reviews

Short Life

[H5O · 29 January 2000]

Unlike Fresh (1994), New Jack City (1991), Catch Me If You Can (1989), or Scarface (1983), this short film details the life of Eddie Matos, who comes from a broken home, and becomes a drug dealer after dropping out of school at an early age. His typology of the innovator is similar to Fresh or Scarface, but his life is cut short. The quick money is there, but before the end, he ends up shot by Sergio, a rival drug dealer, and this event confines Matos to a wheelchair for life.

At the end of the short film, it's sad to see the real Eddie Matos in a wheelchair, a paraplegic, like Ron Kovic, since the quick money and lifestyle of a drug dealer is cut short. Everyone wants a six-figure income, and it's better earning a six-figure salary in the NBA rather than in the streets of New York.

A wasted life

[dtucker86 · 10/10 · 9 September 2023]

This is one hard hitting episode with no happy ending. The first shot is seeing Eddie Matos lying in a pool of blood after being shot and paralyzed. He talks of seventeen years of bad memories of the wretched life that brought him to this point. It seems as if this young man was born under an unlucky sign his father deserted him and his mother was an addict. He is taken in by a loving grandmother but she dies when he is eight. He is then taken in by a family friend who gives him a home but he refuses to buckle down in school and then has to identify his mother's murdered body. Eddie then falls into the trap of drugs becoming a dealer of cocaine and crack. Even though you know what fate has in store for Eddie you can't feel sorry for him because he is just such a stupid, foul mouthed punk who doesn't appreciate anything. The episode ends with a psa from Eddie Matos now totally paralyzed and on a respirator urging people not to do drugs. I don't think they could have made the message clearer then that!