What's it rated? R
When? 2023
Where's it showing? Netflix
Director and co-writer Juel helms this sci-fi comedy that acts as an homage to '70s Blaxploitation films and spoofs real-life horrifying historical events such as the CIA-Contra-crack cocaine epidemic and the Tuskegee Study (the U.S. Public Health Service's 40-year experiment of infecting African American men with syphilis). OK, I admit that neither of those events seems like comedy gold, but this social satire brilliantly skewers the exploitative treatment Black Americans have endured.
Fontaine (John Boyega) deals drugs in a neighborhood called the Glen. Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) is a pimp and one of Fontaine's customer/dealers, and he owes Fontaine money. As he's trying to collect, Fontaine is fatally shot by a rival drug dealer, a murder both Slick Charles and one of his sex workers, Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), witness. Weirdly, the next day, Fontaine returns to demand his money with no memory of being shot, setting up the central mystery that the trio will set off to unravel.
The film succeeds in large part due to its excellent cast, which also includes Kiefer Sutherland as Nixon, the government villain, and David Alan Grier as The Preacher. For his part, Boyega must inhabit four characters: Fontaine, Old Fontaine, Chester, and Tyrone. (122 min.) Δ