Movie Review: Kings

Kings * ½ / *****

Directed by: Deniz Gamze Ergüven.

Written by: Deniz Gamze Ergüven.

Starring: Halle Berry (Millie Dunbar), Daniel Craig (Obie Hardison), Lamar Johnson (Jesse Cooper), Kaalan Walker (William MCgee), Rachel Hilson (Nicole Patterson), Issac Ryan Brown (Shawnte), Callan Farris (Ruben), Serenity Reign Brown (Peaches), Reece Cody (Tiger), Aiden Akpan (Jordan), Gary Yavuz Perreau (Carter), Ce'Onna Meilani Johnson (Sherridane), Lorenz Arnell (Damon), Lorrie Odom (Angela), Lewis T. Powell (Quinn), Flor de Maria Chahua (Maria), Quartay Denaya (Latasha Harlins), Janet Song (Soon Ja Du), Richie Stephens (Officer Bilson).

 

Deniz Gamze Ergüven is hardly the first filmmaker to hit a sophomore slump – but I have a hard time remembering the last filmmaker who crashed harder with their second film, after a debut film as good as her first. That film was Mustang (2015) – which earned the Turkish director a lot of just acclaim, comparisons to Sofia Coppola, and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film – at the time, I may have even liked it more than the eventual winner, the wonderful Son of Saul. That film gave her the clout to go back to Kings – a screenplay she had written years before, but could not find the financing for. The film made the festival rounds last fall, and came out at the perfect time, as there were many documentaries examining the L.A. riots of 1992 released last year (the best two being L.A. 92 and Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992). Those films tried to add much needed context to the riots, and I’m tempted to say that Ergüven’s purpose was exactly the opposite – zeroing in on this confusing time for one large, Los Angeles family. I’m not sure I can say that however, because even after watching the film, I really struggle to figure out just what Ergüven’s point was. It’s tough to think of a more misjudged film than Kings.

 

The film opens with perhaps it’s best scene – in which young Latasha Harlins goes into a liquor store to buy orange juice, and ends up being shot by store owner Soon Ja Du – who is charged, and convicted of the crime – but is shockingly only given probation by the judge. We then flash forward a while, to the weeks leading up to the riots. There are TV’s on in the background of nearly every scene in Kings – showing us the progression of the trial of the officers who brutally beat Rodney King – we know when they are convicted, the riots will start.

 

But Ergüven isn’t overly interested in the trial – or the larger context playing out in L.A. at that time. Instead, her focus is on the family of Mille Dunbar (Halle Berry), a single mother raising approximately 8 children – some of hers, some are foster kids, although the movie never really spells out which is which. Millie works hard, but has no money. The one white guy in their neighborhood is Obie (Daniel Craig), a drunk writer, who lives across the alley and is prone to walking around naked, firing his shotgun out the window when things get too noisy, and occasionally snapping, and throwing things off his balcony. He will, of course, eventually become a love interest for Millie.

 

The other major plot thread involves the eldest son living with Millie – Jesse (Lamar Johnson) – and the two homeless kids he will meet. Millie runs into William (Kaalan Walker), who she knows slightly, after his mother has been sent to jail – and of course, invites him to live with them, despite his fiery temper. Jesse will meet Nicole (Rachel Hilson) at school – and later will help rescue her from some dangerous guys in a liquor store parking lot. A love triangle of sorts develops between the three teenagers – although its mostly in Jesse’ mind, as the moment Nicole sees William, it’s clear who her choice is.

 

The first half of the movie is basically their daily lives – as Millie struggles to make ends meet, Obie slowly becomes a real person – a nice guy – and Jesse tries to straighten out William, and win over Nicole. These scenes are particularly good, but they aren’t horrible. Then the riots start –and the movie flies off the rails.

 

Everything that happens after the riots start doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Jesse does something colossal stupid right off the bat – that leaves William bleeding to death, as Jesse and Nicole try to race him to the hospital, amidst all the chaos. For some reason Ergüven decides the best thing to intercut this with is Mille and Obie going on a frantic search for three of her younger sons – who head out into the riots, but mostly involves the pair of them handcuffed together to a lamp post – as they comically banter and flirt with each other as they try to free themselves.

 

The two storylines don’t mesh together – at all – and are incredibly awkward. There is a good sequence of Jesse and Nicole driving through the riots, and not being able to see much except for smoke and chaos – but the effect is lost every time they cut to Berry and Craig flirting with each other. Worse still, is nothing that any character does in the back half of the movie makes the least bit of sense – from Jesse’s stupid violence, to Millie and Obie leaving her two youngest children at home, alone, during the riots – the actions of her three other kids, which is downright awful.

 

I still think Ergüven is a talented director – anyone who made a film as good as Mustang earns a film as bad as Kings before I completely write them off. Still, it’s hard to imagine a worse film as a follow-up to a great film as this one.

Movie Review: The Bleeding Edge

The Bleeding Edge *** / *****

Directed by: Kirby Dick.

Written by: Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering.

 

The Bleeding Edge is another hot button issue documentary – an advocacy documentary, that looks at an issue, argues its case, and urges viewers to get involved – to take this seriously. These documentaries are always well meaning – and they usually address important subject matter that we really should care about – really should become involved in. They are also usually more than a little dull to actually sit through – favoring statistics over everything else, and then wrapping everything up with an inspirational call to arms. The Bleeding Edge is like that as well – to a certain extent – but it’s still better than most of the films in this vein. In part, it’s because it has a genuinely fascinating subject matter – medical devices, and the lack of regulatory oversite that goes into them. And in part, it’s because director Kirby Dick (and producer/cowriter Amy Ziering) have been doing this for a while, and really know how to make these better than most. No, it isn’t quite the film the pair’s last two films – The Invisible War and The Hunting Ground (the first about sexual assault in the military, the second about sexual assault on college campuses) were – but it’s still better than most.

 

Part of what makes Dick and Ziering’s films better than most is that the strike a good balance between the true life stories they are documenting and the stats about what they are covering. Go too far one way and your doc can easily become sentimental and unconvincing – go too far the other way, and you’re essentially watching a dry, boring lecture.

 

The Bleeding Edge falls victim to neither trap. It focuses on just a few medical devices – and tells the story of the people involved, before slowing zooming out and showing the bigger picture. The films spend the most time on Essure – which was supposed to be a permanent birth control solution for women. Essentially, what it is a piece of metal that is inserted – in what is supposed to be a quick, easy procedure – into the woman’s fallopian tubes, and eventually scar tissue would build up to prevent pregnancy. It didn’t really work though. It caused a lot of bleeding, a lot of pain – often they wouldn’t get implanted properly, and would end up in the woman’s uterus. If you tried to remove them, it would often leave pieces of metal behind – setting off auto-immune disorders. It’s lead to ruined lives, ruined marriages, and lots of other side effects.

 

The filmmaker use this as a jumping off point to examine how medical devices are approved for use by the FDA – not so shockingly, this government agency seems more interested in protecting industry than they are protecting patients. The process seems to go really quickly and easily – and almost everything gets approved, often with little data to back this up. They depend on the industry to self-regulate – which we all know doesn’t work.

 

The film will examine other devices as well – hip replacements with high levels of cobalt, which can cause mental issues. The Da Vinci robot surgeon – which real surgeons are required to have almost no training in before using on real patients. Mesh, which is supposed to help repair a woman’s pelvis, that instead becomes a sharp object inside her body.

 

The film is smart enough to tell the real human stories behind the failures of these devices. It doesn’t just rely on stats – arguing that even though the patients they show know what happened to them, that even more study is required – since no one is doing them. The women who have been victimized by Essure, who form a Facebook group which slowly grows to thousands of members, determined to get the product taken off the market, are truly inspiring.

 

No, I don’t think The Bleeding Edge is a particularly great documentary. It is nowhere near Dick’s best work. But it is an important film – one that shines a light on an important issue, and one that isn’t covered very often.

The Films of Spike Lee: Summer of Sam (1999)

Summer of Sam (1999)

Directed by: Spike Lee.

Written by: Victor Colicchio & Michael Imperioli & Spike Lee.

Starring: John Leguizamo (Vinny), Adrien Brody (Ritchie), Mira Sorvino (Dionna), Jennifer Esposito (Ruby), Michael Rispoli (Joey T), Saverio Guerra (Woodstock), Brian Tarantina (Bobby Del Fiore), Al Palagonia (Anthony), Ken Garito (Brian), Bebe Neuwirth (Gloria), Patti LuPone (Helen), Mike Starr (Eddie), Anthony LaPaglia (Detective Lou Petrocelli), Roger Guenveur Smith (Detective Curt Atwater), Ben Gazzara (Luigi), Joe Lisi (Tony Olives), James Reno (Crony), Arthur Nascarella (Mario), John Savage (Simon), Jimmy Breslin (himself), Michael Badalucco (Son of Sam), Spike Lee (John Jeffries), Lucia Grillo (Chiara), Michael Imperioli (Midnite), John Turturro (Voice of Harvey the Dog).

 

10 years after Spike Lee’s masterpiece, Do the Right Thing, he made Summer of Sam – another film about a New York neighborhood, in the summer heat, where fear and violence thrum underneath the surface, just waiting to explode. This is a different neighborhood, in a different time period, and the reasons the violence is going to explode is different as well – but the feeling is the same, and Lee captures it all. Do the Right Thing is a rare perfect film – Summer of Sam is not. It is long and messy, and strikes out in many directions at once. That’s a major part of the reason why it works as well as it does.

 

This is the first film by Lee with no major black characters – the two black characters with the most screen time – Roger Guenveur Smith’s detective and Lee’s own roving reporter – are really only glimpsed in passing, although they are there to point out that even if this movie is not about race and racism per se – it’s still very much there below the surface. The film takes place in a working class neighborhood of the Bronx – where everything is Italian American. It is an insulated community, fearful of outsiders. It’s the summer of 1977, and the city is gripped in fear of the Son of Sam killer – a maniac with a .44 revolver who shoots couples in cars, and has been sending bizarre, terrifying letters to famed reporter Jimmy Breslin. The killer is seen throughout the film – normally in his dark apartment, most often from behind, as he wails in pain and frustration, and also occasionally on the streets, where violence erupts shortly after he arrives. In the film, he is a pathetic character - impressively played by Michael Badalucco – and that is kind of the point. The man who everyone so feared was this weak, pathetic shell of a man.

 

No one in this Bronx neighborhood knows that however. The men gather on the street and gossip about the killer – convinced that it is someone in their very own neighborhood. Of course, they come up with a list of suspects – and it’s all the strange people – those who do not fit in – that make the list. There’s the long haired Vietnam vet who drives a cab, maybe the priest. Then there’s Ritchie (Adrien Brody).

 

Ritchie is a neighborhood kid who moved to Manhattan a while ago, discovered punk, and has now returned with spiked hair, weird clothes and an affected British accent. In theory, everyone knows him – but they now look at him differently. Why would he want to look like that? He doesn’t help his reputation by starting to date Ruby (Jennifer Esposito), who is known as the neighborhood slut. But unlike the rest of the men around, Ritchie doesn’t use her – he genuinely cares about her, and the pair seem like perhaps a good match. He doesn’t much care about her past – that was before him after all. This is a modern attitude that the lunkheads in the neighborhood don’t seem capable of grasping.

 

The leader of the lunkheads, in some ways, is Vinny (John Leguizamo). He’s married to Dionna (Mira Sorvino) – but seemingly fucks every woman who isn’t Dionna – her cousin from Italy for example, or his boss at the beauty salon, Gloria (Bebe Neuwirth). He’s got the classic Catholic Madonna/Whore complex – he isn’t able to ask Dionna to do the types of things sexually that he wants because he would disappointed if she said yes. He cannot get it up with her anymore, but can with everyone else. They will end up at an orgy at one point – where Dionna does what she thinks her husband wants, who of course, will chastise her for it later, calling her a whore.

 

Vinny isn’t always there when the neighborhood guys do their gossiping – and unlike the others, he remains friends with Ritchie, even if he thinks he is weird. Still, the guys look to him for permission to single him out – as if they feel that unless everyone is unanimous on this, they cannot act. Spinning out of control on drugs, his failing marriage and desperation, Vinny eventually gives into the groupthink.

 

Summer of Sam doesn’t have a plot in a traditional sense – it’s like Do the Right Thing that way. It mainly focuses on Vinny and Ritchie, both together and separate, over the course of this summer of fear. It’s about Vinny becoming unglued, and losing his idea of himself, while Ritchie finds his own identity. Ritchie isn’t portrayed as a saint by any means – he is more than a little delusional about his “show business career” – but he’s trying to overcome the limitations of where he came from. But it’s about the neighborhood as well – the detectives who will go to the local mob boss (Ben Gazzara) because he has his fingers and everything, and may be able to help find the killer. We see TV reports, mostly by Lee’s John Jefferies, who is awkward on camera (this is Lee’s intention) – as he interviews mostly black people, who question why no one cares about all the black people being killed, and mock Jefferies himself (“What are you doing here? I thought you didn’t like black people”).

 

All of this is wrapped up in an overheated mixture of sex, violence, paranoia and fear that pulsates throughout the film. The plot is ragged and messy, but Lee excels at creating that overheated atmosphere in the film. Summer of Sam doesn’t get mentioned very often in relation to Lee’s best films – perhaps because it is overlong and messy, and has a few other problems (Lee doesn’t really solve his normal problem with female characters – although Sorvino does her best with the role, Esposito’s role is too underwritten). But every time I see it, I get wrapped back in its atmosphere of fear, paranoia, sex and violence. This is one of Lee’s best films – and perhaps his most underrated.

The Films of Spike Lee: He Got Game (1998)

He Got Game (1998)

Directed by: Spike Lee.

Written by: Spike Lee.

Starring: Denzel Washington (Jake Shuttlesworth), Ray Allen (Jesus Shuttlesworth), Milla Jovovich (Dakota Barns), Rosario Dawson (Lala Bonilla), Jim Brown (Spivey), Joseph Lyle Taylor (Crudup), Hill Harper (Coleman "Booger" Sykes), Shortee Reed (Coleman "Booger" Sykes  - age 12), Zelda Harris (Mary Shuttlesworth ), Jade Yorker (Jesus Shuttlesworth - age 12), Quinn Harris (Mary Shuttlesworth - age 6), Ned Beatty (Warden Wyatt), Bill Nunn (Uncle Bubba), Thomas Jefferson Byrd (Sweetness), John Turturro (Coach Billy Sunday), Roger Guenveur Smith (Big Time Willie), Lonette McKee (Martha Shuttlesworth), Travis Best (Sip), Walter McCarty (Mance), Kim Director (Lynn), John Wallace (Lonnie), Rick Fox (Chick Deagan).

 

It is no secret that Spike Lee is a huge basketball fan – he’s almost as famous for being on the sidelines of Knicks games as anything else. That love of basketball comes through in He Got Game – the only feature Lee has ever made about his beloved sport. But just because Lee loves basketball, that doesn’t blind him to some of the problems with the business side of things – how the game exploits young, black men, and turns everyone around them – including friends and family – into exploiters as well. He Got Game is a father and son drama about the broken relationship between the best high school basketball player in America, Jesus (NBA star Ray Allen), and his father Jake (Denzel Washington) – his first coach, who drove him harder on the court than anyone else would have dared – and that spilled over into life off the court. When the film opens, the pair haven’t seen each other in a few years, because Jake has been in jail for killing his wife – Jesus’ mother (it’s a little more complicated than that, as we’ll learn). But the Governor is a big basketball fan, and wants Jesus to commit to his old Alma Mater. He agrees to let Jake out of prison for a week – and if he can get his son to commit to his school, he’ll be able to let Jake out of jail early. Essentially, the system is turning the father into yet another exploiter of this young man with talent.

 

His father isn’t the only one, of course, wanting his son to listen to him about what school to go to – and wanting something in return for that choice. Jesus’ Uncle Bubba (Bill Nunn) thinks he should be given a job – perhaps a car, and a house, because of everything he has done for his nephew. He just wants to get his beak wet. Jesus’ longtime girlfriend Lala (Rosario Dawson – in only her second role after Larry Clark’s Kids) keeps pressuring Jesus to meet with an agent – something he isn’t supposed to do. Jesus is given pitches by lots of colleges – we see a weekend visit, where they quite literally throw girls at him, to try an entice him. Everyone has their hand out – there is money to be made everywhere, by everyone – except, of course, by the players. They do this in the hopes of a contract in the NBA down the line for big money. Until then, everyone else earns except them.

 

This is clearly the big take away from Lee’s film (if you’ve seen Hoop Dreams, you will have seen Lee give a speech similar to this to high school stars). But Lee knows he has to tell an actual story in He Got Game – and he ends up telling a great one. Like many Lee films, there is a tendency to perhaps throw too much into the film – the film runs nearly two hours and twenty minutes, and Lee probably keeps a subplot or two too many here. And yet, what he is able to do brilliantly is combine the story of the exploitation of this young basketball star, with the fraught father-son relationship drama that is the heart of the plot.

 

One of the reasons why this works is Denzel, of course. He is fully committed here, and his character really is more than a little bit of an asshole – a mode I like Denzel in as opposed to him playing a saint. The flashback sequences, where we see him on the court with his son are hard to take – because Jake is so hard on a kid who can’t be more than 10. It’s telling, but unremarked on, that he’s swigging from a bottle throughout some of these scenes. Five years in jail has taught Jake a lot – but it hasn’t really softened him. He knows he make a mistake with his wife – that led to her death – and he is truly sorry about that. He isn’t really sorry about what he did to Jesus though. Throughout the film though, Jake wears Jesus down – just enough. At first, Jesus wants nothing to do with him – and by the end, he’s still angry with him, but is willing to acknowledge him – maybe even help him. To be honest, Denzel has to carry the dramatic weight here, because Allen is only an adequate actor. He doesn’t embarrass himself by any means, but it’s easy to see why he hasn’t pursued acting in anyway.

 

I do love that while Lee hasn’t made a traditional basketball movie, he still ends He Got Game with a climatic basketball game – this time, a father and son, one-on-one. I also love how that game plays out – Lee not even pretending that a broken down, middle-aged convict would have a chance in hell against the best high school basketball player in America. Lee has set this up throughout the movie, but he doesn’t quite give us what we expect.

 

As I said, Lee does add too much to the film that doesn’t necessarily belong. A subplot involving Milla Jovovich as a hooker with a heart of gold (even by movie hooker with a heart of gold standards, she’s practically saintly) and her abusive pimp (Lee regular Thomas Jefferson Byrd, who truly is menacing) feels like it doesn’t belong. This is one of those Lee movies where his problems writing women are readily apparent – Jovovich doesn’t have much to work with, the mother (Lonette McKee) is seen in flashbacks, and is basically a martyred saint, Jesus’ younger sister (Zelda Harris – so good in Crooklyn) is given a key scene early, and then forgotten about. I do think Dawson is given a great scene, late in the film, where she acts circles around Allen – explaining what she did and why, which does complicate what could have been a “heartless gold digger” role – but that’s about it. Lee is able to provide so much detail and shading to the male characters, but the women usually do get the same treatment – and it is at times distracting here.

 

Overall though, He Got Game remains one of Lee’s most memorable features – with one of Denzel’s best performances, and a hell of lot to say about basketball – both on and off the court – the kind of stuff that movies mostly ignore, in search of phony uplift. Lee knows that isn’t the whole story – and he’s trying to tell that story here.

Movie Review: Get on the Bus (1996)

Get on the Bus (1996)

Directed by: Spike Lee.

Written by: Reggie Rock Bythewood.

Starring: Charles S. Dutton (George), Ossie Davis (Jeremiah aka Pop), Thomas Jefferson Byrd (Evan), De’Aundre Bonds (Evan Jr.), Isaiah Washington (Kyle), Henry Lennix (Randall), Andre Braugher (Flip), Roger Guenveur Smith (Gary), Hill Harper (Xavier), Gabriel Casseus (Jamal), Bernie Mac (Jay), Steve White (Mike), Albert Hall (Craig), Richard Belzer (Rick), Wendell Pierce (Wendell Perry), Kristen Wilson (Shelly Maxwell), Paula Jai Parker (Jamilia), Gina Ravera (Gina), Joie Lee (Jindal), Randy Quaid (Tennessee State Trooper).

 

Out of all of Spike Lee’s films, Get on the Bus is probably the simplest and most straight forward. He raised the budget of $2.4 million from 15 black men (including himself) and shot the whole film in 3 weeks, with pretty much every scene in the film either in, or around a bus. That bus is travelling from L.A. to D.C. in the fall of 1995 in order for the men on board to attend the Million Man March, a march on Washington organized by Louis Farrakhan, the controversial head of the Nation of Islam. Lee made the film quickly, so it could be released on the 1 year anniversary of the March.

 

The men on the bus are all different from each other – and that, I think, is Lee’s ultimate point with the film. The March was organized by Farrakhan, and the film doesn’t dodge the things he has said and done which are controversial or the things he has said that were undeniably anti-Semitic. But the film wants to show that the men who arrived in Washington – and marched on there – represented much more than the Nation of Islam. It wants to make it clear that you cannot paint all black men with the same brush – which is something that happens all too often in the media.

 

The tour is led by George (Charles S. Dutton) – he’s a driver for the bus company, and he organized it. He tries to keep everyone together, everyone upbeat even as they face challenges along the way. The senior member of the group is Pop (Ossie Davis) – full of stories about the past, and how important this march is. There’s also Evan and his son Evan Jr. (Thomas Jefferson Byrd and De’Aundre Bonds) – who are shackled together by court order – an act whose symbolism is lost on no one. Kyle and Randall (Isaiah Washington and Henry Lennix) are a gay couple in the process of breaking up. Flip (Andre Braugher) is a cocky, confident actor – who is the most outspoken homophobe on the bus (but not the only one). Roger Guenveur Smith is Gary a half white cop, whose father was also a cop “killed by a brother” – who shouldn’t have to prove he’s black to the others, but some disagree. Hill Harper is a young USC student, making a documentary about the trip. Jamal (Gabriel Casseus) is a former gang banger, who has now found Allah and turned his life around. There are others – they mainly stay in the background though. Richard Belzer plays the Jewish replacement driver who comes aboard at one point – but cannot stay. He cannot bring himself to drive to a rally organized by a man who called Judaism a “gutter” religion, and praised Hitler. Wendell Pierce plays a wealthy car dealer, who joins for a short time, and says the most racist, anti-black things in the whole movie – thinking that being black buys him an excuse. The others disagree.

 

By its very nature, the film is simple and direct. You do get to know the characters, but none of them are overly complex – they are by and large, a group of strangers when they board the bus, and will probably remain so once they get off again in L.A. They are brought together for this trip – they are all taking for different reasons. And there-in lies the point. The Million Man March was important even if you don’t like Farrakhan – he is barely seen in the archival footage from the event shown – not given the spotlight that say Maya Angelou is given. The Million Man March brought together all sorts of different black men – who for a short time were united. Get on the Bus is not a great film – but it’s a valuable document of an important event.

The Films of Spike Lee: Girl 6 (1996)

Girl 6 (1996)

Directed by: Spike Lee.

Written by: Suzan-Lori Parks.

Starring: Theresa Randle (Judy/Girl 6), Isaiah Washington (Shoplifter), Spike Lee (Jimmy), Jenifer Lewis (Boss #1 – Lil), Susan Batson (Acting Coach), Debi Mazar - Girl #39), Peter Berg (Caller #1 – Bob), Michael Imperioli (Caller #30 - scary caller), Kristen Wilson (Salesgirl #1), Debra Wilson (Salesgirl #3), Naomi Campbell (Girl #75), Gretchen Mol (Girl #12), Richard Belzer (Caller #4 – Beach), Larry Pine (Caller #33 - Wall Street), Coati Mundi (Caller #8 – Martin), Delilah Cotto (Caller #8 – Christine), Anthony Nocerino (Caller #6), Tom Byrd III (Caller #18), Madonna (Boss #3), John Turturro (Murray - the Agent), Quentin Tarantino (Director #1 – NY), Ron Silver (Director #2 – LA), Joie Susannah Lee (Switchboard Operator).

 

Spike Lee is a great director, but his biggest blind spot has always been female characters. His female characters always seem more like constructs – ideas – more than human characters. This was true even of Nola Darling in his breakthrough film She’s Gotta Have It – who was less developed than any of the men in the movie, and is certainly true of most of the supporting female characters in his films. The best female characters in his film up until this point are ones like Annabella Sciorra’s in Jungle Fever – where she brings more to the role than what was on the page, or Zelda Harris’ in Crooklyn – which was based on Lee’s sister and co-writer of that film, Joie. He has improved – somewhat anyway, over the years. – Teyonah Parris’ Lysistrata in Chi-Raw is one of his best female protagonists, and the Nola Darling of the 2017 Netflix series version of She’s Gotta Have It is far more complex than her cinematic counterpart. But it still remains a weakness of Lee’s – which is perhaps why Girl 6 is the weakest film he has ever directed. Lee doesn’t seem to understand his main character at all, and lead actress Theresa Randle doesn’t help much. Lee was smart enough to use a screenplay written by a woman – Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks – but he doesn’t really find a way into the material – to bring it to life in any way that makes sense. The film was meant to be empowering to its female protagonist – but it doesn’t really play that way.

 

Randle plays Judy, an aspiring actress living in New York. We first see her at a humiliating audition for a famous director (Quentin Tarantino playing Lee’s vision of who Quentin Tarantino is – this was before Jackie Brown, when the two argued in the press about Tarantino’s use of the n-word in his films, but no one who saw Girl 6 could question how Lee saw Tarantino even then). The director insists on seeing Judy’s breasts for the audition – and while she doesn’t want to, she shows him anyway. Lee makes the curious decision to show us in the audience her breasts as well, which kind of makes him as bad as the director he is denouncing at that moment.

 

After that, Judy tries to find work – but cannot get it anywhere. She ends up – after a series of interviews – working for Lil (Jennifer Lewis) as one of her many phone sex workers. After a brief training session, Judy finds she is a natural at it – the men love her, and keep on requesting her. And she finds herself enjoying her work – perhaps too much – and becoming too involved with those who call in. All the other girls are faking it – Judy is not.

 

That right there is probably the biggest problem with Girl 6 – the film never really finds a way to make it convincing that Judy would love her clients – and the phone sex she is having – so much. It doesn’t matter who is phoning in, what their fetish is, Judy seems to get off on it. With one caller, they start talking about his sick mother – and she even agrees to meet him in person (he doesn’t show). Another caller is scary, and makes threats that may carry over into real life. Lee has said that he wanted to take the power away from the male callers, and give it to Judy in the film – but that doesn’t really work out. The men are mostly sad guys, who have a fetish they want to live out (not so much in real life, but the fantasy of the phone version) – but I’m not sure how that translates into her having the power.

 

The various subplots and digressions in the film don’t add much either. Isiah Washington is on hand as Judy’s ex-husband, a kleptomaniac, but he’s not a well thought character in any meaningful sense. Lee himself plays Judy’s neighbor and friend – basically a sounding board for her problems – but he doesn’t add anything to the movie other than judgmental comments about her “phone bone” stuff. There are three digressions – when Lee re-creates Carmen Jones, Foxy Brown and The Jefferson’s with Judy at the center – these are amusing, but serve no real purpose to the movie.

 

Ultimately, you can say that about the whole film. Not much in the film seems to connect with everything else in the film. You keep watching the film, thinking that is going somewhere – that Lee is building to something and that something never gets there. The central character remains a blank, and she’s lost in a story that doesn’t go anywhere or have anything really to say. Lee is usually such a confident filmmaker – but here, he doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing.

The Films of Spike Lee: Clockers (1995)

Clockers (1995)

Directed by: Spike Lee.

Written by: Spike Lee and Richard Price based on the novel by Price.

Starring: Harvey Keitel (Det. Rocco Klein), John Turturro (Det. Larry Mazilli), Delroy Lindo (Rodney Little), Mekhi Phifer (Ronald 'Strike' Dunham), Isaiah Washington (Victor Dunham), Keith David (André the Giant), Pee Wee Love (Tyrone 'Shorty' Jeeter), Sticky Fingaz (Scientific), Regina Taylor (Iris Jeeter), Fredro (Go), Elvis Nolasco (Horace), Tom Byrd (Errol Barnes), Lawrence B. Adisa (Stan), Hassan Johnson (Skills), Frances Foster (Gloria), Michael Imperioli (Detective Jo-Jo), Mike Starr (Thumper), Lisa Arrindell Anderson (Sharon Dunham), Paul Calderón (Jesus), Brendan Kelly (Big Chief), Graham Brown (Herman Brown), Steve White (Darryl Adams), Spike Lee (Chucky), Harry Lennix (Bill Walker), Thomas Jefferson Byrd (Errol).

 

Up until Clockers, Spike Lee had made it a point to not tell the stories that many other black filmmakers spend most of their careers working on – stories of drugs, gangs and violence. Lee had other issues on his mind – and wanted to expand the types of stories black filmmakers could make. Yet, in the mid-1990s, those stories were important to the black community in America – and needed to be told. With Clockers, Lees adds another masterwork to the list that includes Boyz in the Hood and Menace II Society. Those two films feel like flip sides to the same coin – Menace being a response to Boyz. With Clockers. Lee is working at something different.

 

His story is about Strike (Mekhi Phifer) – a young, black man living in New York housing projects, working the benches. He and his crew are there around the clock, selling crack to whoever wants it – they have a complex set of signals and gestures, designed to protect them should the cops show up. They show up a lot. Sometimes you get arrested, sometimes not – it depends on how the cops feel at the time. Strike’s boss is Rodney (Delroy Lindo), a scary drug kingpin, who runs a candy store. In one scene, we watch as he grooms another batch of young kids – some of whom will definitely come to work for him some day. His employee turnover is high – with all the deaths and prison time served by those under him. Strike stands back, and mouths along with the words Rodney speaks – he knows the pitch.

 

The film hinges on a murder early in the film. Rodney isn’t happy with one of his employees – who he has set up in a fast food restaurant in order to sell there, off the streets. He tells Strike that if something were to happen to this young man, Strike could take his place. He’d be off the streets, making real money. Strike runs into his brother Victor (Isaiah Washington) – a hardworking man, with two jobs, a wife and a kid, who is still poor – and is also beaten down and tired. The young man does in fact end up dead – but who pulled the trigger?

 

The film then is a police procedural and a whodunit in a sense. The lead detective is Rocco Klein (Harvey Keitel) – who is at least a little different from his partner (John Turturro) and the other cops. Not so different that he doesn’t participate in what could generously be called gallows humor (it’s actually more like cruel indifference) over the body of the dead kid, but different enough that he doesn’t want to just slam the case shut when an arrest falls into their lap. It’s not that he cares really – but he thinks he’s getting played, and he cannot stand that. He’ll push harder than most – which arguably is what leads to everything that follows.

 

Lee’s ultimate point with Clockers is, I think, that the gangs, drugs and violence has so infected these communities, there is no escaping it – even if you want to stay out of it. For the users, they are trapped in a cycle of addiction, for the dealers, they are caught in a cycle of harassment and arrests – they make money, sure, but they could be shot at any moment. For the cops, there are in the communities every day – and mostly, they don’t really care (Turturro refers to the projects as a self-cleaning oven) – the drug cops looking more for bribes, than making arrests. If you are an honest citizen, trying to support your family – like Victor is – you’re stuck in poverty, even if you work two jobs around the clock – and you still end up with less money than those drug dealers. If you’re a mother trying to keep your young son away from the gangs, it’s hard. You cannot watch them all the time, and the drugs are everywhere. There is no escape – your life is as good as ruined. Which makes the end of the movie make sense – what else is Strike supposed to do?

 

When you look at Clockers along Lee’s previous film, Crooklyn, you see what the neighborhoods were to what they became. The characters in Crooklyn were poor – but they were a part of a community that looked out for one another, and where your kids would still be safe on the streets. That community has all but vanished in Clockers – one local cop, Andre (Keith David) – does his best to help the young boys in the projects, but he’s fighting a losing battle, and knows it. Lee offers no solution in Clockers – it’s a problem still relevant now, 23 years later, but shows what has become of those streets – where community has vanished, and been replaced with guns, drugs and death. Clockers is an exciting film in many ways – Lee has made a great genre film here – but it’s also an incredibly sad film, that offers no hope that things will get better anytime soon.