 |
 |
| |
Genre |
| |
Drama, Romance |
| |
|
| |
Running Time |
| |
116 min |
| |
|
| |
Distributor |
| |
Paramount Vantage |
| |
|
 Official Website |
 Get Movie Showtimes and Tickets
NEW YORK REVIEW
At the multiplex in my progressive little fairy-tale kingdom of Park Slopia, the trailer for Black Snake Moan—in which big black Samuel L. Jackson chains little white nympho Christina Ricci in her shorty-cutoffs to his radiator—drew dark murmurs and even a few boos. What the hell—had Tarantino remade Mandingo?
We'll see how the movie itself plays. It's outlandish, hilariously overripe, and possibly sexist: You'd expect no less from Craig Brewer, the writer and director who made the passionate case for how hard it is out there for a pimp. But I loved the picture's tabloid energy and heart. At bottom, Black Snake Moan is an old-fashioned feel-good, Sunday-schoolish kind of parable about a broken, bitter ex-alcoholic who's spiritually reborn by, uh, chaining a little white nympho in shorty-cutoffs to his radiator. But it's not how you think! Wouldn't you have chained Anna Nicole to your radiator if you could have saved her? Wouldn't you chain Britney to your radiator?
Okay, it is pretty sexist. But Ricci's character, Rae, isn't a predatory she-devil. She's an abused and profoundly damaged young woman. She needs therapy—or an exorcism.
Jackson's character, Lazarus (I know, I know), is a former blues singer, and the Deep South of Black Snake Moan is a world of bottomless blues—and bottomless greens and reds and pinks and yellows and browns. It's a very colorful movie. Ricci's flesh tones jump out of the screen; you almost forget how much weight she has lost. Those eyes were huge to begin with; now they look like something popping out of a shrunken head. (It's still a big head in proportion to her body, though.) In any case, no one can win a staring contest against Samuel Jackson. "God seen fit to put you in my path," he says, incinerating her with his gaze, "and I am going to cure you of your wickedness." Basket cases saving other basket cases: If that's not a design for living…
Jackson and Ricci are marvelous. So is the bucket-of-blood blues soundtrack, especially the song that goes, "I love you/Love them chicken heads, too." Justin Timberlake doesn't sing, but he gives a fine, sensitive performance as Rae's fiancé, who suffers from his own uncontrollable spasms. Brewer directs as if his actors make him high. There is balm in Gilead. —Reviewed by David Edelstein, New York Magazine
|
Release Date: 03/02/07 (Future Release)
Email
Print
