The Stick Up Kids  The Stick Up Kids is a 2008 film directed by Hawthorne James and starring Bryce Wilson, Mel Jackson, Tariq Alexander, and Hawthorne James. Four friends from Harlem resort to con games and armed robbery in order to make ends meet, but they find their friendship put to the test when an influential slumlord plots to gentrify their neighborhood. Now, in order to prove that they can't be bought out or pushed around by a man who thinks everyone has their price, these four young hustlers are about to carry out their most ambitious and treacherous scam to date.