BEFORE: It feels like Samuel L. Jackson week just started, but it's already over after today. I guess that's what I get for doubling up, it makes time seem to go by faster.
Time also feels like it's moving faster in general, now that there are positive results from many people getting vaccinated, and as a result more restaurants and entertainment venues are starting to open up again, or making plans to open up. There's a target date for Broadway shows to re-open, and maybe about half of the movie theaters in NYC are open, while the rest are making plans to do so, and then increase capacity. I've been applying for jobs at movie theaters, but I've been getting no response - here I hoped I could get caught up in a wave of hiring and maybe make a little money from another part-time job, plus get out of the house more, and it just hasn't been happening. BUT I had an interview today at a movie theater downtown, so we'll see what happens - it's only the second job interview I've been on since I started looking for work during the Christmas season. The first interview was at the m&m's Store near Times Square a few weeks ago, but I wasn't offered a job - eh, who wants to work selling candy, anyway?
THE PLOT: A black police detective must solve the strange case of a kidnapped boy and also deal with a big racial protest.
AFTER: This movie is adapted from a novel written by Richard Price, who also wrote "Clockers" and "The Wanderers" and the screenplays for "The Color of Money", "Mad Dog and Glory" and "Ransom", plus the 2000 edition of "Shaft". Later he wrote episodes of the TV show "The Deuce", which I've watched, and "The Wire", which I have not. But there's a, I don't know, a common grittiness to all those stories, or something like it.
This story is mainly about a disoriented woman who claims that her son was kidnapped by a carjacker, and the detective who's investigating her claims with the help of an organization that helps to track down missing children, but as time goes by, certain elements of her story don't seem to add up, and both he and the members of that organization work to gain her trust, while also weighing the possibility that she might have killed her own son and concocted the carjacking story to cover it up. This is told against the backdrop of racial unrest in a New Jersey housing project, a place that the police focus on as perhaps being the key to the investigation.
It's a little unclear to me WHY the police officers chose to focus on the housing project - sure, maybe it's because she said a black man stole her car, and that's where many black people live, but was there any evidence that pointed in that direction? Black people could live anywhere, and the housing project is just one location. If not, then it feels like a shameless attempt to tie all the story elements together, the kidnapping with all the other drama and unrest taking place in the other part of town. The mother's flashbacks make it seem like her car got stolen out in the woods, and that could be pretty far from the city's housing developments. But perhaps it's just where all of that town's police start their investigations, I don't know - but thinking that all the criminals live there, or that somebody there must know something about every crime, that's some really racist thinking. Perhaps that's the point?
Meanwhile, the volunteer group has found a way to narrow the search - I didn't quite follow their train of thought, either - and they suggest searching the woods, plus also an abandoned hospital nearby, called Freedomland. This part of the story was clearly meant to be important to somebody, but I'm not sure it served any purpose other than to waste time. The search really just serves as a framework for the head of the missing children's organization to spend more time with the mother and get inside her head. When all the pieces of the puzzle are revealed, do they come together coherently? I'm not so sure.
It also feels like a huge piece of Oscar-bait to have Julianne Moore really overdoing it as the anguished mother. Her ability to self-harm and then act out physically under interrogation goes way over the top, sure, we feel her pain but do we have to feel so MUCH of it? Meanwhile, the police presence at the housing project ultimately does more harm than good, and by the end of the film there's a full-blown riot. This makes the film accidentally timely and relevent, only I'm still not sure how things in this narrative escalated from there to here.
Also starring Julianne Moore (last seen in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"), Edie Falco (last seen in "I Love You, Daddy"), Ron Eldard (last seen in "Just a Kiss"), William Forsythe (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Aunjanue Ellis (last seen in "Motherhood"), Anthony Mackie (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), LaTanya Richardson (last seen in "When a Man Loves a Woman"), Clarke Peters (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods"), Peter Friedman (last seen in "I Shot Andy Warhol"), Domenick Lombardozzi (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"), Aasif Mandvi (last seen in "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook"), Philip Bosco (last seen in "Shaft" (2000)), Dorian Missick (last seen in "The Bounty Hunter"), Joe Forbrich (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Genevieve Hudson-Price, Marlon Sherman, with a cameo from Colman Domingo (last seen in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom")
RATING: 4 out of 10 missed court appearances
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