Devastating Crises: Personal and Widespread
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, but better options are on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue below [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
AUGUST 2, 2023—BUT FIRST! Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark takes a brief break next week, back by August 9 (hopefully with reviews of Barbie and Oppenheimer) as Nina and I have our annual immersion into the Godfather trilogy when I attempt to use my limited kitchen skills (not too challenging, though; just spaghetti, spinach salad, lots of wine) while revisiting all the Corleones.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
And here’s another trailer with extensive Press links.
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: (In both this film and They Cloned Tyrone most of the characters are Black—which is a crucial plot-point in … Tyrone, a more subtly-emerging-one here—so with that understanding in mind I’ll only specify notable White characters in both of these films in my comments as they’re the ones differentiated from the larger casts just as the main White guy in each film is the bitter antagonist, both of whom ultimately get their just “rewards.” With that understanding in place, on we go with Mickey Hardaway.) The opening scene is of a couple on the rooftop terrace of their penthouse where they’re discussing some future options until the doorbell rings with their delivered food, but when the guy of the pair goes to retrieve their meal he’s confronted by a young man with a gun who shoots him, then points the gun at the woman. From that shocking start we meet the gunman, Mickey Hardaway (Rashad Hunter), as he’s talking with his girlfriend, Grace Livingston (Ashley Parchment), about all the agony he’s currently experiencing so we assume that opening scene was some sort of a disturbed fantasy brought on by his anxieties. She’s sympathetic, encourages him to get therapy (it helped her Mom after her Dad was killed) so most of the film from that point onward is either dialogue exchanges in his sessions with psychiatrist Dr. Cameron Harden (Stephen Cofield)—who immediately acknowledges that we all need help, including him: no shame in it—or extended flashbacks showing us what Hardaway's talking about to Harden in their sessions.
Mickey’s a talented artist, yearned for a career as a cartoonist/animator, a situation he was well on the way to until calamity struck, putting him in his current state of exasperated depression where he finds everything in his current life, except Grace, to be horrible, so much so suicide’s becoming an option. His trauma's deep-seated, as we see in the first flashback where he’s (Blake Hezekiah as boy Mickey) obsessed with drawing, gets encouragement from his mother, Jackie (Gayla Johnson), and older brother Travis (Christopher M. Cook), but his gruff father, Randall (David Chattam), sees art as useless for a career, gives Mickey no support for his dreams. (Dad’s own dreams of being in the NFL were brought to a sudden halt when Jackie became pregnant with Mickey so he had to work in dead-end-jobs to support his family, still blames his son for his own failed life; his only solace comes from lots of beer, a bad habit he’ll pass on to Mickey as the kid reaches young adulthood.) Joseph Sweeney (Dennis L.A. White), Mickey’s art teacher at school is impressed with the talent, encourages Mickey to join his weekend classes at a local recreation center, but, even as Jackie’s willing, it’s a total non-starter with Randall, who hits his son for the family "sin" of daring to disagree.
Then we jump ahead to Mickey on the verge of finishing high-school (back to Hunter portraying him), meeting with Guidance Counselor, Mr. Pitt (Charlz Williams), who praises him for winning first place at an art fair, then surprises him with a copy of a letter from the Art Institute (which Mickey never received at home) offering him a grant to attend there (yet, even this good news is tempered later by a bully at school who hits him just to prove his stupid machismo). When Mickey gets home he confronts Randall about not handing over his son's own copy of the letter, leads to a fight where Mickey clobbers Dad with a baseball bat; Mom rushes in, alternates between defending husband or son, Mickey leaves for good in frustration. Then we’re back to session 1 when Dr. Harden tells Mickey he expects abuse, relates how his own father was hard on him, had no interest in his career plans, stopped speaking to him, but finally apologized so Dr. H feels Randall will finally do the same.
In session 2 the flashback takes us to Mickey having finished at the Art Institute but is now working crappy jobs to pay back expenses the grant didn’t cover (he’s almost broke, lives in a cheap motel) when he comes upon Mr. Sweeney who’s determined to help him, puts him in contact with Nathan Hammerson (Samuel Whitehill), a notable-newspaper-owner (this film’s prominent White guy) who’s so enamored with Mickey’s talent he not only will run the young man’s comic strip, “Ben and Chip,” in his paper but wants to partner with him in getting some well-received-animated-series on TV, but Mickey only wants to draw his own comic strip, not get involved with someone else’s plans, so Hammerson agrees. As flashback continues, Mickey still needs more income so he takes a job as Art Director at Sweeney’s rec center where he meets Grace, they connect (for a few beach boardwalk scenes we switch to color, but go back to black & white, the standard for most of the film, maybe a metaphor of its own). Mickey drinks too much (like Randall), doesn’t know how to love Grace, she needs more so he tries, she encourages him to have a gallery show to get his art seen beyond the comic strip. Back to session 2, Mickey has more traumas to get off his chest, but Dr. Harden insists this week’s time is up, frustrating Mickey. Next week when he shows up he’s been drinking (but not fully drunk) so Dr. H finally allows him to stay for session 3 where Mickey relates how Hammerson sold an unsigned drawing of Mickey’s (from years ago in school) as his own, led to a fat contract so Mickey confronted him, got fired and blackballed from the cartoon/animation industry, punched Hammerson hard, got arrested, Grace bailed him out, they quarrel, so she leaves.
⇒Dr. Harden calls time again during session 3 because he needs to see another patient leaving Mickey furious, so he gets fully drunk, goes to Hammerson’s place and shoots him, the incident reported on TV news. Then Mickey kills Dr. Harden, which is what we saw in that opening scene (someone with sharper detective skills than me would have recognized Harden as the man in that scene when we first meet him with Mickey, but it didn’t register with me so the scene when repeated was even more impactful to my awareness), goes to his family home where he also shoots Randall. Grace has followed him there, wants to just run away with him, but the cop, Officer Williamson (Sean Alexander James), who chastised Mickey for letting life’s circumstances overwhelm him when he was briefly in jail, shows up, shoots Mickey, takes Grace in as a witness. Sweeney, aware of the killings, has come to the Hardaway home, defends deceased Mickey to the cop due to his situations of constant abuse, confronts the incredulous cop about how police so easily kill young Black men.⇐
So What? Once in awhile Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark gets a request from a truly independent filmmaker to give some attention to their work, which we always try to do due to a strong desire to give support to up-and-coming-cinema-artists; fortunately for me such an offer came in from Marcellus Cox whose film proved to be such a pleasure to watch that I decided to put it first in this posting, even though I’d previously assumed that position would go to They Cloned Tyrone, something I’d taken notice of but delayed to see and write about until I could address the more-highly-publicized-recent-work of James Mangold (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny; review in our July 19, 2023 posting) and Wes Anderson (Asteroid City; review in our July 26, 2023 posting). … Tyrone proved to be an interesting experience (with some hesitations from me), but the film that deserves the main focus this week is Mickey Hardaway, a marvelously written and produced story that I highly encourage you to watch as it deserves to be seen and celebrated. Director-screenwriter Cox sent me a link to a screener where I saw in the first 15 minutes how impactful this film would be, with acting on the mark throughout, such an articulate script, so beautifully shot (by Jamil Gooding) as effective lighting enhances the simple-but-impactful-compositions, with some image-emphasis used well in contrasting closeups of Dr. Harden and Mickey in the process of their therapy sessions.
As I note below about the R rating for … Tyrone being largely based on what’s considered to be an abundance of foul language, this … Hardaway script also makes frequent use of the notorious N-word, but the version ending with “…ga” rather than “…ger,” always with Black characters talking to or about each other so in context it’s intended to be organic within the flow of the action, not a trigger word, but do be aware it comes up frequently which I see as just adding to the plausibility of the story, not any sort of distraction but realize it could be a problem for some. (But what do I, an old White guy, know about any of that when I’ve had few Black close friends over the course of my life—although I do now have great Black next-door-neighbors, but they’re from Nigeria, don’t use any N-word variations—except, of course, "Nigerian." [Now that I think about it, when I was growing up in Texas my parents and other adult White people would use the “genteel” version that ended in “…gra,” as if that was somehow more humane, I suppose.]) I can’t say too much more about the impact of Mickey Hardaway without getting into the Spoiler material, so I’ll just leave it with this being an impressive film, one of the best I’ve seen this year, a powerful exposé of how a life of such potential was ruined by callous resentment from a Black man—Mickey’s abusive father—and the admitted greed (he made it clear to Mickey from the start how what he really cared about was piling up greenbacks) and toxic ego of a White man—Mr. Hammerson, who cared ultimately only for his own advancement. It’s a powerful story, expertly told, may come to a film festival near you but clearly is available for streaming so I encourage you to pay the small price needed for access to this fine film.
Bottom Line Final Comments: For streaming Mickey Hardaway (You'll see it, won’t you? I admit, it’s harsh in places, but so's life in general with this guy’s life worth watching and learning from.) consult JustWatch where you’ll find it’s in Standard Definition for $1.99 on Amazon Prime Video, $3.99 on Google Play Movie, YouTube video, though my recommendation's to go up a buck for High Definition. I'd prefer more CCAL support, but it just hasn’t been addressed enough so only 8 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, but it’s a great 8 as they’re all positive so for now it's at 100%; Metacritic hasn’t found it yet, but IMDb has 71 reviews (mine soon to join IMDb; I’m not welcome at RT). In addition to critics’ responses you'll find encouragement from festivals where the original version of Mickey Hardaway (2020) won the Platinum Award for Best Short Film from both LA Shorts and NYC Indie Film competitions, so keep your awareness sharp for future work from Marcellus Cox; he’s obviously a filmmaker with a better career awaiting than poor Mickey Hardaway was able to achieve. I’ll wrap up as usual with a Musical Metaphor of final commentary, this time Steven Stills’ somber “4+20” (from the 1970 Crosby, Still, Nash & Young Déjà Vu album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSdy4uNwR54 as it picks up well on the travails of both father and son Hardaways: “The son of a woman and a man who lived in strife / He was tired of being poor […] I grow weary of the torment, can there be no peace? / And I catch myself just wishing that my life would simply cease.” This is the only solo on the album, just Stills singing to his own guitar accompaniment, because his bandmates refused to add anything else, feeling the song was complete as is. I’d offer a similar sense of satisfaction to Mickey Hardaway, an unrelenting exploration of how an innocent, sensitive person can be taken apart by the cruel selfishness of others* (it's a hell of an accomplishment on a $30,000 budget; congratulations, … Hardaway team!).
*Maybe I have personal sympathy for Mickey, beyond not wanting to see a person pushed over the emotional edge, because I have a natural ability for cartooning (made lots of copies of what I saw in Disney/Warner Bros. shorts/features), had a foggy plan of working as a Disney animator but got sidetracked during my BFA years when studio faculty encouraged me to follow their path rather than commercial art; however, as I eventually got better at what I was producing in my classes I came to fear I’d never be good enough to support myself with gallery-worthy-work while even my compromise of Art Education went nowhere as my 1 semester of practice teaching at an Austin, TX high school showed me I’d never use my lifetime credential, not because of the students but instead sensing little connection to other public-school teachers and administrators. Instead, my interest in photography led me to graduate degrees in Radio-TV-Film, ultimately resulting in these eternally-rambling-essays.
They Cloned Tyrone (Juel Taylor) rated R 119 min.
Here’s the trailer:
Before reading further, please refer to the plot spoilers warning detailed far above.
What Happens: Small-time-drug-dealer Tyrone (a first name I would have had a hard time knowing from watching the film [got it from a review] as everyone calls him only by his surname) Fontaine (John Boyega), in what seems to be the early 1970s but Internet info says it's current day, lives in a neighborhood called the Glen (fictional, somewhere in the South, film shot in Atlanta), continues to mourn the death of his younger brother, never sees his mother because she keeps her room's door locked, rejects Fontaine’ offers of food because she’s “watching her stories” on TV. One of his customers, Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), is behind on his latest payment, also he’s a pimp who’s just had a falling out with one of his prostitutes, Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), who storms out of Slick’s place just as Fontaine arrives. After heated words with Slick, Fontaine gets some cash, will return tomorrow for more but is shot dead in his car by rival dealer Isaac (J. Alphonse Nicholson) because Fontaine hit one of Isaac’s customers with the car, breaking the guy’s leg. The real shocker, though, comes next morning as Fontaine wakes up as usual; has a short, dead-end exchange with Mama as usual; heads to the nearby-liquor store for a big bottle of malt as usual, pours some into the cup of local guy Frog (Leon Lamar) as usual; then visits Slick who’s shocked to see Fontaine alive. They find Yo-Yo to confirm she witnessed him get shot, then carried away in a van; after a neighborhood search they find the van, go into what seems to be an empty house, find an elevator which they take to an extensive basement lab where they don’t learn much from a nervous scientist, but Slick samples what he thinks is cocaine (it isn’t), starts laughing, then suddenly shoots the scientist dead.
Our trio's quick to leave; however, on the way out they see a corpse on a table, seemingly Fontaine, which freaks him out, denies it’s him. Next day, Fontaine's back to the house to find no evidence of the elevator; then he's with Slick and Yo-Yo at a fried chicken place where everyone’s laughing so Slick’s convinced the food’s doctored with whatever he ingested yesterday. To learn more, Yo-Yo seduces the manager (David Shae), sees surveillance monitors of the entire Glen, then they find the weird stuff’s also in a popular grape drink plus in some hair-straightening-products for local women.
With a tip from Frog, our trio goes to a local church where a charismatic preacher (David Alan Grier) leads the congregation in an odd song; after the service, our protagonists discover another elevator within the alter, taking them to a huge underground lab where local residents are either cloned or subjected to weird experiments, controlled by White scientists. Our 3 exit the lab into a strip club where DJ Strangelove (Joshua Mikel) controls the crowd with music and prompts, until the action’s halted by Nixon (Kiefer Sutherland)—a coincidental name, I’m sure—a White guy accompanied by a Fontaine clone named Chester (Boyega). Nixon explains this is a government operation to bring peace to America by populating impoverished Black neighborhoods with controllable-clones, then threats to our 3 if they don’t stop their inquiries. Next day, Fontaine finally breaks into Mom’s room, finds nothing but her voice on a small tape recorder. Yo-Yo decides to continue their quest but is captured by Nixon so Fontaine, Slick, and a small army of Glen residents storm the underground facility to free captives and clones; Yo-Yo's about to be killed by Nixon until Slick kills him instead. ⇒Fontaine’s taken by Chester to an older Fontaine (says he’s always been the real one) where he explains the racially-motivated-murder of "their" little brother by a cop inspired him to work with this project to essentially turn Blacks into subservient Whites in order to create a peaceful, assimilated society, but then our Fontaine uses a trigger phrase to cause Chester to shoot older Fontaine. As the naked clones break out into the street, news coverage reveals the secret operation, with our trio headed to Memphis to further root out other areas where this subterfuge is being played out. This all ends with another guy named Tyrone (Boyega) in L.A. watching TV with his friends, when he sees a Fontaine clone in the naked crowd that looks like him, now realizing he is also a Fontaine clone.⇐
So What? Right off you should know the main reason for this R rating is language (yes, there are some deaths by shooting yet none of it's graphic), with a lot of obscenities (mostly of the “mother…..r” kind, but also extensive use of the version of the N-word that ends in “…ga” rather than “…ger” if that might be any problem for you, but it’s spoken that way only by Black folks talking to or about each other, so it’s organic to the story, not intended as a racist trigger [just as in Mickey Hardaway], which should make for an acceptable difference, I'd say, but the decision's yours if you find this to be any sort of a problem). With that consideration clarified (I hope), I think that even if you just read the plot summary of ... Tyrone you’ll see it has some connections to the psychological horror film-aspects of Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017; review in our May 11, 2017 posting) where the consciousness of older White people is being forced into younger Black bodies (trapping the original persona deep inside as well), plus Peele’s 2019 follow-up, Us (review found in our March 27, 2019 posting), about another government-run-cloning-experiment gone horribly wrong. Given all of these Fontaine clones, though, you might also be reminded of Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (George Lucas, 2002) where Jango Fett served as the template for the cloned early version of the Stormtroopers army, originally in defense of the Republic, later pressed into service for the Empire.
While They Cloned Tyrone has its own aspects of fascination, though (including a sense of reminder for me of ABC TV’s The Mod Squad [1968-’73] where 3 rebellious youths [played by Michael Cole, Peggy Lipton, Clarence Williams III] become unlikely undercover cops able to better infiltrate/connect with criminals they needed to deter [admittedly, just 1 Black—Williams III—among the leads, but I still feel it carries a bit of resonance into what we see in … Tyrone]), I had a hard time putting all of those associations aside while watching this current film because certain parts of it seemed so familiar. Another concern is how ambiguous the ending is regarding how far the clone project has already gone, how the larger society is going to respond to this situation (I’ll steal the only lines from Paul Simon’s “Gumboots” {*} [on his 1986 Graceland album] that have anything to do with the film’s ultimate crisis: “I said ‘Hey, you know, breakdowns come and breakdowns go, so / What are you going to do about it? That’s what I’d like to know’ “). I suppose it’s intentional that nothing is truly resolved by the end of … Tyrone, so it’s left to your creative imagination as to what will happen next, but such an ambiguous halt to all of the previous action is still frustrating for closure, at least to me.
⇒Further, there may be some confusion toward the end when “cloned” (we assume) Fontaine tells Chester to shoot old Fontaine because this elder’s actually the clone, although in retrospect we just have to accept this is the strategy to get the cloned hitman to kill a guy partly responsible for all of this chaos, especially when we’re left at the very end wondering just how many cloned Fontaines are running around in various locales—for that matter, if old Fontaine truly is the original person we thought we knew as Tyrone then the Fontaine we're first introduced to, then killed, must be a clone as well to be replaced by the one who dominates this story, so what's in the consciousness of each of them?—and what's up about Mama?; it’s all a bit hard to keep up with at times, I admit,⇐ another reason why I’m somewhat hesitant to be overly-supportive with a stars-rating. I think the acting’s solid throughout (as you’d expect from the top cast names) and it’s certainly relevant to explore the idea of an oppressive White society manipulating/destroying Black citizens and their environs (gotta be fictional-fantasy, right?), but taking into account how crucial elements of this story are seemingly (obviously, as I see it) borrowed from other sources I think do a more-impactful-job of critiquing these topics, I’m just not as satisfied about … Tyrone as I thought I might be from what I’d previously read.
Bottom Line Final Comments: Unlike me, though, the bulk of the CCAL is generally quite supportive of They Cloned Tyrone with RT at 94% while the MC average is 74%. Even though the film debuted in a limited number of domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters on July 14, 2023 (so few I find no mention in Box Office Mojo, probably just to formally have a theatrical release on record when awards season rolls around), its more-important-location is Netflix streaming, residence since 7/21/23 (free to subscribers, but a basic cost of $6.99 for a month provides access, plus whatever else you might find in their vast library of options [consider that if you wish, but I get no kickback no matter what]). If you want to get a somewhat modern sense of 1970s Blaxploitation movies plus some disturbing social commentary on what passes for solutions to ingrained racial problems in our confrontational-culture, I think you’d find … Tyrone to be intriguing and entertaining enough, but there's a better version of the second item I’ve just mentioned found in Jordan Peele films noted above. OK, enough blather from me, let’s close this out with a Musical Metaphor to apply one last perspective on what’s been presented. Were I better informed on a wide range of Black tunes I’m sure I could come up with something even more relevant to the plot details and intentions of … Tyrone, but honky that I am what comes to mind for me is the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tune, “Déjà Vu” (once again, on that fabulous 1970 album of the same name) at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=k6ezX9w4JwE (this video is more specifically anti-Vietnam War, but it’s concept of speaking out against government cruelty is appropriately connected to the other themes of They Cloned Tyrone) as it ethereally-explores “And I feel like I’ve been here before / Feel like I’ve been here before / And you know, it makes me wonder / What’s going on under the ground.” Slick, Yo-Yo, and especially Tyrone are wondering that also, leaving us hoping they'll get some answers or results.
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Some options for you to consider: (1) SAG-AFTRA strike allows some independent productions to continue; & (2) How production delays during the strike could damage the movie business.
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