By Claudia Puig, USA TODAYWhen it comes to vipers, Samuel L. Jackson should have stopped with slithering airborne reptiles.
In Black Snake Moan, set in the Tennessee backwoods, Jackson's role is worlds away from his sharp, sophisticated law enforcement character in Snakes on a Plane. Though this film tries to convey a sense of campy fun, it ends up feeling off-putting and disturbing.
Jackson plays Lazarus, a taciturn blues guitarist and farmer whose wife has left. He is despondent and on the brink of losing faith when he finds a scantily clad blonde (Christina Ricci) lying unconscious and beaten on the road near his clapboard house.
Instead of losing his religion, his faith is reborn, hence the heavy-handed moniker of Lazarus. Convinced God put the troubled Rae in his path for a reason, he soon discovers that she's the town tramp. But it's not as simple as that.
Rae suffers from "spells" of nymphomania that drive her almost insane. So Lazarus sets out to cure the tortured girl. The first plan that occurs to the guy is chaining her up. The scenes of her trying to escape her confinement are intended to be darkly funny, but they are not easy to watch. Given the enslavement of the white Rae by the black Lazarus, racial matters beg to be confronted but never are.
The movie suffers from major tonal problems. Is it a pulpy comedy, a morality tale or a sleazy exploitation movie? Taken on its face, it seems at best ridiculous and at worst offensive, particularly in a scene involving an innocent young boy attacked and deflowered by the chained-up Rae during one of her overwhelming desirous episodes. The boy seems traumatized, but no one appears to care — not even the local preacher (John Cothran Jr.), who tries to save Rae's soul.
Justin Timberlake shows his considerable acting talents in the small, but key, part of Ronnie, an idealistic but anxiety-plagued soldier who loves Rae.
Black Snake Moan doesn't hold a candle to writer-director Craig Brewer's quirky and gritty Hustle & Flow, which earned Terrence Howard an Oscar nomination last year.
The best thing about Black Snake Moan, a song title, is the blues soundtrack.
The movie is an absurdly jarring collection of archetypal characters in miserable circumstances with a resolution that feels forced and tacked on.
3 comments:
Ricci needs to keep her bangs down.
yeah, no kidding. that chick has like three foreheads.
Boy, somehow I was totally distracted from her forehead in that picture.
C'mon, isn't their room in your hearts for big pretty moon faces?
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