Talk to Me (2007)
Talk to Me is one of those “two men who don’t understand one another get together and do something unexpectedly important” pictures. One of them is wild and flamboyant, in touch with his inner id. Except id is inconsistent and undisciplined. This man has a chip on his shoulder. The other man is the more Felixy of the odd couple. He’s got discipline and consistence in spades, but doesn’t ever put himself out there. He doesn’t take risks. If the two men never meet, they may or may not live perfectly adequate, maybe even successful lives, combine the two and you have the legendary stuff that sentimental movie biographies are made of.
The two men of Talk to Me, a well crafted film by the talented Kasi Lemmons, are Petey Green (Don Cheadle) and Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Petey Green is a self-destructive ex-convict who fancies himself a DJ, Hughes is a promising exec at a small radio station that happens to come upon Green while visiting his brother in prison. Hughes is understandably reluctant at first to entertain Green’s proposition that they put his prison show on the actual airwaves. But Green wins him over. And Hughes wins Green over.
We know how these films work, and we know, true story or not, how each act is going to play out. Films this reliant on formula are usually only as good as their performers. Talk to Me happens to have two of the most electric performers in the movies today. Don Cheadle is solid, and more interesting than most in their better work, but disappointingly predictable; the rabid, bite you at any moment electricity of his role in Out of Sight is needed but missing. Maybe it’s the script. The film, also disappointingly, keeps Green’s supposedly honest, inflammatory broadcasts (keep in mind this is a black man at the height of the Civil Rights Movement) on the backburner. The first third or so of Talk to Me, which details Green’s attempts to get on the radio, has a loosey goosey irrelevant catch as catch can charm. Then Martin Luther King Jr. dies and the film gets a case of the Very Special Episodes.
Ejiofor is superb. Playing the straight laced supposedly white washed black man, he’s the REAL wild card of Talk to Me, with a heat, a simmering confusion of the bullshit, the hypocrisy, the racism on both sides, that powers even the more mundane stretches of the script. It all comes together in a scene where Hughes, after a half an hour of Green’s swaggering bullshit, invites Green down to a poolhall to negotiate. Hughes turns the tables on Green, and he turns the tables on the audience as well. This scene says more about the class and race issues of the time than any four more obvious documentary inserts possibly could.
Cedric the Entertainer, Taraji P. Henson (this woman is too good not to break out), Vondie Curtis-Hall, and Martin Sheen round out and color the film in appealing ways. The radio station where Hughes and, eventually, Green work is one of those lived in slightly idealized places of only in the movie eccentrics that you wish you could hang out in in actuality. Talk to Me isn’t perfect, it’s too schematic and reverent, but the scheme very rarely goes down this good. Lemmons’ affection for the material, and her actors, is contagious.
★★★
November 29th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Taraji Henson has been one of my favorite actors since I saw her in Baby Boy. Personally, I hope she never breaks out and has to do something like Pretty Woman for her career. She’s so good amid ensembles like this one.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:40 am
Good point, let’s keep her to ourselves before those bland “bankable” projects seize her. Henson was also wonderful in Hustle and Flow.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Sounds like the material just wasn’t quite up to the cast. That’s too bad, because Ejiofor and Cheadle are a pretty great combo.