Review

Review Date: 29-July-07
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Talk to Me (2007)

An early turning point in Kasi Lemmons' "Talk to Me" finds a respectable businessman telling an outspoken ex-con something like, "You say the things I'm afraid to say, and I do the things you're afraid to do." A late turning point finds them recalling this line and renewing their friendship because of it. I question whether such character- or relationship-defining dialogue ever occurs in real life. I rather doubt it. So it particularly rubs me the wrong way in a movie like this, which recounts the life of an actual person whose talent was telling the truth.

"Talk to Me" takes place in Washington, DC, in the late sixties. Petey Greene (Don Cheadle) is the uneducated son of criminals who has spent most of his life behind bars. During his latest stint he became a prison deejay and found his calling as a trash-talking pundit. When straight-laced radio manager Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor) pays a perfunctory visit to his brother in jail, Petey latches onto him as a means and motivation for a future. (That both men are black is at first a feeble connection.) Dewey does not take Petey seriously until he shows up at the station shortly afterward, a free man, at the precise moment when Dewey's boss (Martin Sheen) is pressing him to reverse their plunging ratings. It takes a lot of convincing but Petey does get behind the microphone as the longest of long shots. Following an awkward start, he establishes himself as an icon for DC's large black population, which needs his voice for reassurance just as it needs Martin Luther King's for inspiration.

Petey's own struggles and the civil strife of his day conjure up ideas about people's inability to escape their self-image and the painful but necessary course of revolution. Yet these are side effects of the picture. Unlike the reportedly raw experience of the hero, the movie is comprised of sculpted moments that don't strike a nerve often enough. Both of the talented leads appear reined-in, and the token female (Taraji P. Henson) is cute but dispensable. Whenever Cheadle starts to heat up on a riff he is cut short (are modern audiences too narrow or complacent to hear what Petey really had to say?), while Ejiofor gets lost in a role that wavers between enabling sidekick and co-star with individual failings. "Talk to Me" speaks in tones of humor and drama about social and personal brotherhood. But a clear message doesn't come through.

Copyright © 2007 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.