BEFORE: Well, since I'm always busy in February watching romance films, I never have slots to schedule anything for Black History Month - well, better late than never, right? Once March and April roll around, I can finally devote some time to that topic. "The Piano Lesson" was one example, and here comes another one. I'll have to see if I can fit anything else on this topic that counts in between Easter and Mother's Day.
Kevin Carroll carries over from "Paper Soldiers".
THE PLOT: In 1955, after Emmett Till is murdered in a brutal lynching, his mother vows to expose the racism behind the attack while working to have those involved brought to justice.
AFTER: This is another film that got heavily promoted during the Oscar campaign race in 2022, they had at least one guild screening in the theater where I work. But then no Oscar nominations came calling, I wonder why that is. Was this just really obvious "Oscar bait", because sometimes voters don't respond well to the hard sell, or what can be perceived as pandering. I mean, OF COURSE this is an important subject matter, what happened to Emmett Till was absolutely deplorable, and his mother's actions afterward had an effect on the civil rights movement and struck a blow, however big or small, against racism and inequality in general.
But this film is just SO heavy-handed, there's absolutely nothing subtle about it. Why tap people on the shoulder when you can hit them in the head with a brick? So to speak. Right from the very start, they kind of overplay everything when Emmett is getting dressed for his trip to Mississippi. His mother is clearly concerned about him being aware that Chicago and Mississippi are two very different places, and he needs to be aware that there is racism in the South, and that sometimes it can be a dangerous place, etc. etc. She brings this up SEVERAL times in the first few minutes of the film, so it's almost overkill, when in truth we probably have no idea how many times she brought up this subject while he was preparing for his trip. Then they discuss whether he should wear his father's cufflinks or his ring (umm, why can't he wear both?) and you just KNOW this is going to be important somehow later in the film.
They tipped their hand - I mean, it's right there in the synopsis, what's going to happen to Emmett in Mississippi, and it's fine for a mother to be worried about her son, but here she's SO overly worried about him that even if you don't already know what's going to happen, you still sort of know what's going to happen. I mean, there's concern, and then there's genuine over-protectiveness - and I know, from personal experience, that you can't spell "smother" without the word "mother". Sure, sometimes moms get a "bad feeling" about things and their concerns are unwarranted, but we just know that's not the case here. But again, we weren't there in Chicago in 1955, so we really don't know WHAT was said, or HOW worried she was in advance, that's really all just speculation. Right?
It's not that long ago that there were TWO Americas, that lived by different rules. This is highlighted by seeing a train traveling from north to south and at some point, the black people were forced to move to a separate car, because the train was about to cross some imaginary line into another state where the rules were not the same. And you can impart on someone traveling that their behavior needs to be changed, but still there are some lessons that need to be learned the hard way. When I was a teenager I went to Germany on an exchange program, and at that point there were TWO Germanys, east and west. And we were told that the rules were different in the two countries, because one was communist and the other was a republic. We were nowhere near Berlin, but I think at one point we were close to the border between the two countries. There was nothing that drove the message home more than seeing East German soldiers, then it all became very real. Wouldn't you know it, we were there when President Reagan made some terrible joke on a hot mic about bombing Russia in 5 minutes. Let's just say that the German people didn't really find that very funny, and they took it out on any Americans that happened to be in the vicinity. OK, so my experience doesn't come close to what happened to Emmett Till, but I know some small thing about having to act differently while in hostile territory.
If I give this film a low score, please don't take that as a condemnation of Till's story or civil rights in general or the struggle of African-Americans, I support that cause but I decided long ago to make my scores based on my level of enjoyment, primarily. And of course this story was meant to be disturbing foremost, over enjoyable. Till's mother also wanted her dead son's body to be openly photographed and for that picture to gain attention in order to highlight the disturbing nature of the injustice and violence that her son suffered. So in my defense, nobody's really going around saying that this was their favorite movie, because it just wasn't designed to be.
OK, can my conscience be clear now? Moving on...
Directed by Chinonye Chukwu
Also starring Danielle Deadwyler (last seen in "The Piano Lesson"), Jalyn Hall (last seen in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Frankie Faison (last seen in "Fatherhood"), Haley Bennett (last seen in "Cyrano"), Jayme Lawson (last seen in "The Woman King"), Tosin Cole (last seen in "Unlocked"), Sean Patrick Thomas (last seen in "Lying and Stealing"), John Douglas Thompson (last seen in "The 355"), Roger Guenveur Smith (last seen in "Dope"), Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Keisha Tillis, Marc Collins, Diallo Thompson (last seen in "The Hate U Give"), Tyrik Johnson, Keith Arthur Bolden (last seen in "Bandit"), Darian Rolle, Sean Michael Weber (last seen in "The Leisure Seeker"), Eric Whitten, Enoch King, Carol J. Mckenith, Elizabeth Youman (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Njema Williams (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Destin Freeman, E. Roger Mitchell (last seen in "Selma"), Al Mitchell (last seen in "Greenland"), Brandon Bell, Leland L. Jones (last seen in "A.C.O.D."), Euseph Messiah, Jackson Beals (last seen in "Contraband"), Princess Elmore, Brendan Patrick Connor (last seen in "Joker"), Jonathan D. Williams (last seen in "The Peanut Butter Falcon"), Lowrey Brown (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Ed Amatrudo (ditto), Tim Ware (last seen in "Transporter 2"), David Caprita (last seen in "The Specialist"), Josh Ventura (last seen in "Pain Hustlers"), Leon Lamar (last seen in "Poms"), Ed Sturdivant, Jaylin Webb (last seen in "Armageddon Time")
RATING: 4 out of 10 white jurors
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