The Guilty: Scalding Tour de Force

My wife and I just The Guilty, a scalding tour de force of a movie on Netflix.  I'm not going to give away much if any of the plot, definitely not the crucial parts.  I will say that nothing quite seems like it is.  And you've got to stay with this movie til the end.

Here's what I can tell you: almost all of the movie occurs on the phone.  Other than Jake Gyllenhaal, who puts in what may be the performance of his career as Officer Joe Baylor, on 911 phone duty because he did something wrong in the street on his job, we see just a few other minor characters.  Otherwise, everyone else, including some very major characters, are voices on the phone.  This easily could have been a powerhouse play -- a play for the ages.  Just like the movie (based, according to IMDb, on a Danish movie).

Joe fields a variety of nuisance and crackpot calls.  And then gets a call from Emily, voiced by Riley Keough (The Girlfriend Experience and more).  We also get to hear from Abby (Emily's daughter), Henry (Emily's husband, voiced by Peter Sarsgaard), Rick (Joe's partner, voiced by Eli Goree who played Cassius Clay in One Night in Miami), Bill (Joe's boss, voiced by Ethan Hawke) and other notables.  But it's all pulled together -- and apart -- by Gyllenhaal's stunning performance, vaunting from exhausted sarcastic to high voltage shatter for a range of reasons.

Kudos to Antoine Fuqua for directing and Nic Pizzolatto for writing this unforettable package of narrative, Gyllenhaal on the screen, and other star power by voice.  I'm no particular friend of police on the edge, given what has been happening for multiple decades and is finally getting some long due attention.   But, well, see this movie and add it into your personal equation.

One Night in Miami: A Good Movie for Tonight

This seemed like a good time to review One Night in Miami, which my wife and I saw and loved on Amazon Prime Video the other night -- a good time because Joe Biden is President, a human being back in the White House, and Kamala Harris, in effect his first appointment all those months ago, is Vice President, the first woman and person of color as VP.

One Night in Miami details a long meeting between Cassius Clay (soon Muhammad Ali), Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke in a hotel room after Clay beat Sonny Liston to win the World Championship in 1964.  The meeting really happened.  The conversations in the movie were scripted (by Kemp Powers) and superb.  Same for the acting (Eli Goree, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr. in those four roles), and likewise the brilliant directing by Regina King.  And the story told can be a considered a preamble or foundation of Black people in power in America in the 21st century, Barack Obama to Kamala Harris.

Back in 1964, the ways to get that power were far from clear, and highly debatable.  Malcolm wants black people to stand on their own.  His greatest conflict is with Sam Cooke, who sings all kinds of sweet, catchy romantic ballads (which, by the way, I love), leaving it to Bob Dylan, much to Malcolm's consternation, to write and sing "Blowing in the Wind".  Jim Brown knows all about racism, but is in the game (football and soon movies) for personal success, at least to some extent.  The question is how much?  Clay on the verge of becoming Ali is just 22, high on his being "the greatest," but attracted to Malcolm's philosophy.

Pursuit of fame and money back then was and still is a soul-depleting business, unless you can figure out a way to pursue those goals, and keep them if you reach them, with your inner core intact, and devoted at least in part to loftier goals for yourself, your people, and the world.  The path isn't easy, and One Night In Miami portrays four black guys, incredibly talented and bright in different ways, on the edge of that path so well and memorably, it could have been a Socratic dialogue written Plato.   See it and learn and enjoy.

 

"Sam's Requests" in this anthology is about Sam Cooke!