Talk to Me
By Charles Mudede

The mystery is this: Why is Talk to Me not a great movie? It has an interesting story (how an ex-convict became a popular radio DJ); it’s set in the mid-’60s (the most exciting period in America’s political history); it has two of the five best black actors in the world (Don Cheadle, Chiwetel Ejiofor), and it’s directed by the second most important black female director in all of cinema (Kasi Lemmons—number one is, of course, Julie Dash). All of the right ingredients were there to make this movie work—and for its first 30 minutes it really looks like something big is going to happen. But the moment the second act starts, things slow down and never pick up again. The majority of Talk to Me is a flatline: neither bad nor good, neither boring nor interesting, neither brilliant nor dull. We see Peter Greene (Cheadle) leave prison and get a job on a DC radio station managed by an educated black man, Dewey Hughes (Ejiofor). We see his spectacular rise to fame, and his long fall to misery and obscurity. But somehow we are never drawn into the life of Greene, into his love affairs, friendships, betrayals, hopes, and failures. It’s not the actor’s fault (Cheadle masters his character), and it may not be the fault of the director (Lemmon is talented; her film Eve’s Bayou is almost as rich and thick as Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger). My guess is the fault lies with the writing and the cinematography; both are merely functional. The writing gets this and that point across, and the cinematography is stiff and steady. With a better script, and more life in the camera, Talk to Me might have become the movie everybody is talking about.

TALK TO ME DIR. KASI LEMMONS | RATED R | AT SELECT THEATERS IN LA AND OC