I went to see this with J who very rightly pointed out, "You really can't go wrong with a Don Cheadle pic." For the most part, I'd have to agree. Not all of Don Cheadle's films are great (i.e. Swordfish) but they are never bad. Cheadle began doing small roles in small films and lots of television appearances (he even did a small guest appearance as some background character in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). But, ever since 1997's Boogie Nights, Cheadle has become an A-list actor who has proven himself to be quite astute at picking his material.
Talk to Me is basically a bio-pic that focuses on the life of Petey Greene, a convict turned radio host. Thankfully, this film doesn't fall into the same trap that so many bio-pics tend to do. Rather than create a pop-psychology profile that tries to understand the inner Petey, Kasi Lemmons, the director, is content to see Greene as simply a person doing what he can within the context of a particular social and historical context. In other words, this is biography in the old-school model. An expose of a man and his times, not a deep profile into the scarred childhood that created the man or drives him to self-destruction.
The one thing about this film that bothers me a bit is the color processing. Much like the film Zodiac , Lemmons uses a slight sepia-like tint in her film to emulate the film stock used in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In other words, if the film is about the early 70s then she wants to make the film look as if it were made in the 1970s. Zodiac and Talk to Me are, of course, not the only ones who do this. The recent Rodriguez/Tarantino collaboration, Grindhouse, essentially did the same thing in trying to make the form match the content. A 21st-century view of the 1970s will be always be precisely that ... the present looking at the past. Trying to dress up that perspective in the guise of aesthetic authenticity is, in fact, the most inauthentic thing an artist can do. Don't get me wrong, the color processing is most definitely not a deal breaker. This is a solid film and definitely worth watching. I just wish it stayed true to the present.
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