Category Archives: Biopic

Biopic, Historical drama, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

Oliver Stone looks back, and to the Right: W ***

May 10, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on October 18, 2008)

Two of America’s finest actors.

No one has ever accused Oliver Stone of being subtle. However, once audiences view his highly anticipated film concerning the life and times of George W. Bush, I think the popular perception about the director, which is that he is a rabid conspiracy theorist who rewrites history via Grand Guignol-fueled cinematic polemics, could begin to diminish. I’m even going to go out on a limb here (gulp!) and call W a fairly straightforward biopic.

Stone intersperses highlights of Bush’s White House years with episodic flashbacks and flash forwards, beginning in the late 60s (when Junior was attending Yale) and taking us up to the present day. I don’t think a full plot summary is necessary; if you are a regular Hullabaloo reader, you know the story all too well: Alcoholic son of Texas oil millionaire stumbles through early adulthood, gets into Yale (eventually Harvard) through the back door, marries a librarian, then discovers his Special Purpose after helping Poppy become President.

Thanks to the savvy guidance of a homunculus sidekick he dubs as “Turdblossom”, he is elected as the governor of Texas (twice) and then finds God, who informs him personally that he is destined to become President, because He has a Special Mission for him. Turns out that his Special Mission is to fight the Evil Doers where they live, after they stage a terrorist attack on America. Trouble is, there seems to be some confusion as to exactly where they live. In the meantime, he’ll need to bitch slap that Bill of Rights (just a little), for our protection.

Best supporting performance?

I’m not saying that Stone doesn’t take a point of view; he wouldn’t be Oliver Stone if he didn’t. He’s already catching flak for the screen time spent dwelling on Bush’s battle with the bottle (the manufacturers of Jack Daniels must have laid out serious bucks for the ubiquitous product placement ). Bush’s history of boozing is a matter of record.

Some are taking umbrage at another one of the chief underlying themes of Stanley Weisner’s screenplay, which is that Bush’s angst (and the drive to succeed at all costs) is propelled by an unrequited desire to please a perennially disapproving George Senior. I’m no psychologist, but that sounds reasonable to me.

Live, from New York…it’s Saturday Night!

As usual, Stone has assembled a massive cast with a bazillion speaking parts. His choice of Josh Brolin for the lead initially struck many people as an odd selection (including yours truly), but now that I have seen the film, I have to say it was a smart move.

Brolin is nothing short of brilliant. He doesn’t go for a cartoon caricature, which would have been the easy route to take; I think he pulls off a Daniel Day Lewis-worthy “total immersion” quite successfully. It is interesting to note that Brolin (tangential to Junior) has been accused of riding into a Hollywood career on the coattails of his dad (James Brolin) and stepmother (Barbara Streisand); if Stone chose his leading man with this in mind, he is a very canny operator.

Some of the other standouts in the cast include Toby Jones as Karl Rove, James Cromwell and the great Ellen Burstyn as President and Mrs. Bush Sr., Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell and Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney. Wright and Dreyfuss play off each other beautifully while recreating Cheney and Powell’s tiffs. Scott Glenn isn’t given an awful lot to do as Donald Rumsfeld, but he has the evil squint down.

The only casting misfire is an overly mannered Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice; it is like she dropped in from an SNL sketch. Perhaps it is not entirely her fault, as there’s so much prosthetic on her face, she can barely move her lips.

Perhaps I should qualify something. When I called this a “straightforward” biopic, I was speaking in relative terms. You have to keep in mind that in one respect, Stone is boldly going where no filmmaker has gone before. PT 109 aside, this is the only biopic about a president to be released while he is still sitting in the Oval Office; and since the former film dealt with JFK’s WW2 exploits, and not his actual presidency, that makes Stone’s film even more unique.

Another hurdle is the fact that the Bush administration has probably been satirized, parodied and ridiculed (via print, blogosphere, TV, film, theater, comedy club, YouTube, T-shirt, billboard, and water cooler chat) more than any other presidency in my lifetime (not that they haven’t asked for it in every way imaginable). This zeitgeist makes it virtually impossible for someone to make a “serious” biopic about W. By playing it straight, Stone is really being subversive (clever boy!).

If the Bush administration had never really happened, and this was a completely fictional creation, I would be describing Stone’s film by throwing out one-sheet ready superlatives like “A wildly imaginative look at the dark side of the American Dream!” or “A vivid, savage satire for our times!” But you see, when it comes to the life and legacy of one George W. Bush and the Strangelovian nightmare that he and his cohorts have plunged this once great nation into for the last eight years, all you have to do is tell the truth…and pass the popcorn.

Behind the Music, Biopic, Rock 'n' Roll, True Crime

Dancing in the dark: The Killing of John Lennon * & Control *1/2

May 5, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 16, 2008)

This week, I’m taking a look at two recent films you may have missed which are now available on DVD. Both fit into a genre I refer to as “Rock ‘n’ Noir”; a twilight confluence of the recording studio and the dark alley.

There is a particularly chilling moment of “art-imitating-life-imitating-art-imitating life” in writer-director Andrew Piddington’s film, The Killing of John Lennon, where the actor portraying the ex-Beatles’ stalker-murderer deadpans in voice-over:

“I don’t believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believe that one should become a person like other people.”

Anyone who has seen Scorsese and Shrader’s Taxi Driver will attribute that line to the fictional Travis Bickle, an alienated, psychotic loner and would-be assassin who stalks a political candidate around New York City. Bickle’s ramblings were based on the diary of Arthur Bremer, the real-life nutball who grievously wounded presidential candidate George Wallace in a 1972 assassination attempt.

Although Mark David Chapman’s fellow loon-in-arms John Hinckley would extrapolate further on the Taxi Driver obsession in his attempt on President Reagan’s life in 1981, it’s still an unnerving moment in Piddington’s eerie and compelling portrait of Chapman’s descent into alienation, madness and the murder of a beloved music icon.

Piddington based his screenplay on transcripts of Chapman’s statements and recollections, and focuses on the killer’s complete break with reality, which ultimately culminated in John Lennon’s tragic demise in December of 1980.

The story picks up in the fall of that year, when Chapman (Jonas Ball) was living in Hawaii and reaching the end of his emotional rope. Fed up with a life of chronic underachievement and low self-esteem, he lashes out at his hapless wife (Mie Omori) and domineering mother (Krisha Fairchild).

He is obsessed with J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye; reading the book again and again, until in his own deluded mind, he has transmogrified into the story’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield, on a mission to seek out and denounce all the “phonies” of the world.

He quits his job and takes the first of two fateful solo trips to New York City, where he gleans his “purpose”-to kill his musical idol, John Lennon, for being such a “phony”. His twisted mission is postponed after he attends a screening of Ordinary People, which somehow snaps him back to his senses. Sadly, his creeping derangement did not reamin dormant, and we all know what transpired.

Ball is quite convincing in the role; so much so that it will be interesting to see if he can avoid being typecast as a brooding psychopath in future projects (Steve Railsback remains synonymous with Charles Manson to me, several decades after his creepy channeling in Helter Skelter.)

To their credit, director and lead actor do not glorify Chapman or his deeds; nor do they portray him as a boogie man. He’s an everyday Walter Mitty… gone sideways and armed with a .38. The film is a fairly straightforward docu-drama; what makes it compelling is Ball’s edgy unpredictability and the moody, atmospheric cinematography by Roger Eaton.

I can see how boomers like myself, who have the most sentimental attachment to the Beatles, would have an inherent revulsion for reliving this horrible event; I suspect that younger viewers would find the film’s subject matter less morbid and of more objective interest. Clearly, there is an audience for this subject, as there is another film out about Chapman called Chapter 27, starring Jared Leto (I have not seen it; it played the festival circuit last year and is due on DVD September 30).

So what is the point in lolling about in a madman’s head for nearly two hours? And isn’t giving attention to this loser who was a “nobody until I killed the biggest somebody on earth” (the movie’s tag line) only rubbing salt in the wounds of Beatle fans everywhere? Well, perhaps. Then again, it is part of history, part of life. Movies are art, true art reflects life, and life is not always a Disney movie, is it?

I never realized the lengths
I’d have to go
All the darkest corners of a sense
I didn’t know
Just for one moment –
hearing someone call
Looked beyond the day in hand
There’s nothing there at all

-from” Twenty-Four Hours” by Joy Division

1980 was a bizarre yet pivotal year for music. The first surge of punk had come and gone and was being homogenized by the marketing boys into a genre tagged as New Wave. The remnants of disco and funk had finally loosened a tenacious grip on the pop charts, but had not yet fully acquiesced to the burgeoning hip hop/rap scene as the dance music du jour.

What would soon become known as Hair Metal was still in its infancy; and the inevitable merger of “headphone” prog and bloated stadium rock sealed the deal with Pink Floyd’s cynical yet wildly successful 2-LP “fuck you” to the music business, The Wall (the hit single from the album, “Another Brick in the Wall”, was the #2 song on Billboard’s chart for the year, sandwiched between Blondie’s “Call Me” and Olivia Newton-John’s “Magic”). MTV was still a year away from killing the radio stars.

The time was ripe for a new paradigm. For my money, there were several key albums released that year that lurched in that direction. They included Remain in Light by the Talking Heads, Sandinista by the Clash, Black Sea by XTC, Sound Affects by The Jam…and Closer by Joy Division.

Joy Division was a quartet from north of England way who formed in the late 70s. They mixed a punk ethos with a catchy but somber pop sensibility that echoed the stark industrial landscape of their Greater Manchester environs. Along with local contemporaries like The Fall and The Smiths, they seeded what would eventually be dubbed the “Manchester scene” (brilliantly dramatized in Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 film, 24-Hour Party People).

I was blown away the first time I heard Closer; I was struck by the haunted baritone of lead singer Ian Curtis, who had a Jim Morrison-like manner of chanting cryptic lyrics that really got under your skin. Like Morrison, Curtis’ touchstones as a songwriter were more Conrad and Blake than Leiber and Stoller; an invocation of the soul, as opposed to “singing”.

Tragically, by the time that album had been released, and the hit single “Love Will Tear Us Apart” was playing on the radio, Curtis had passed away, at the age of 23. Distraught over his deteriorating marriage and chronic health problems, he committed suicide in May of 1980.

It’s possible that side effects from the myriad anti-seizure medications he was taking for epilepsy had contributed to elevating his depression and despair. The surviving band members regrouped, dusted themselves off and mutated into a more radio-friendly synth-pop outfit called New Order (and the rest, as they say, is history).

That doesn’t sound like the makings of a feel good summer movie, but I can’t heap enough praise upon Control, first-time director Anton Corbijn’s impressionistic dramatization of Curtis’ short-lived music career. Based on the book Touching from a Distance, a memoir by Curtis’ widow Deborah, the film (shot in stark black and white) eschews the usual biopic formula and instead aspires to setting a certain atmosphere and mood. Corbijn, known previously as a still photographer, actually had a brief professional relationship with Joy Division. He snapped a series of early publicity photos for the band.

The film is fueled by a mesmerizing performance from newcomer Sam Reilly , who a had a bit part in the aforementioned 24-Hour Party People (playing Mark. E. Smith, lead singer of The Fall). He avoids “doing an impression” of Ian Curtis, opting instead for a naturalistic take on a gifted but tortured soul. The fact that Reilly is also a musician certainly doesn’t hurt either (all four actors portraying Joy Division did their own “live” singing and playing).

He holds his own against the seasoned Samantha Morton, who plays his long-suffering wife. Morton is one of the finest and most fearless actresses of her generation; she just keeps getting better. Her character reminded me of the roles that Rita Tushingham tackled head-on in the British “kitchen sink” dramas of the 1960s.

In fact, the intense realism that Reilly and Morton instill into their portrayals of a struggling young working class couple, along with the black and white photography and gritty location filming strongly recalls classics of the aforementioned genre, like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Look Back in Anger and The Leather Boys. Even if you are not a fan of the band, Control is not to be missed.

Biopic, Historical drama, On Politics, Up the Workers

Arise, Commie Pinko Hollywood Lefties: Reds (**) & The Internationale (*)

April 30, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 17, 2007)

Every time I see our illustrious VP’s mug on the tube or hear mention of Halliburton, I always flash on a scene in Warren Beatty’s Reds. Early in the film, the story’s protagonist, journalist/activist/Communist Party member John Reed (Beatty), is at a meeting of Portland’s Liberal Club, where discussion has turned to the current war in Europe (WWI). Reed is asked what he thinks the conflict is “about”. Reed stands up, simply mumbles one word, then promptly sits right back down. The word: “Profits”.

Indeed, it is a testament to Beatty’s own sense of conviction and legendary powers of persuasion (or as Tom Hanks put it, repeatedly, at the recent Golden Globe Awards, “Balls”) that he was able to convince a major Hollywood studio to back a 3 ½ hour epic about a relatively obscure American Communist (who is buried in the Kremlin, no less).

As we know now, of course, the film turned out to be a critical success, and garnered a dozen Oscar noms (it won three, including Best Director). Almost unbelievably, it was not released on DVD until late 2006. If you haven’t seen it in a while, or have never seen it-you owe yourself a screening, particularly if you are a history buff.

Diane Keaton turns in one of her best performances as Reed’s lover, writer and feminist Louise Bryant. Maureen Stapleton (who we sadly lost last year) earned her Best Supporting Actress trophy with a memorable portrayal of activist Emma Goldman. Jack Nicholson is perfect as the mercurial playwright, Eugene O’Neill. Beatty deserves kudos for assembling an amazing group of surviving participants, whose anecdotal recollections are seamlessly interwoven throughout, like a Greek Chorus of living history.

If you really want to make a “subversive” night of it, a certain rousing anthem that figures prominently in the Reds soundtrack is the sole spotlight of another recent DVD release. Blending archival footage with thoughtful commentary, The Internationale takes a look at the origins and historical impact of the eponymous political anthem, from its 19^th century roots in the French Commune movement to Tienanmen Square and beyond, packed into a breezy 30 minutes.

Arguably one of the most idealized (and frequently misinterpreted) rallying songs ever composed (just the melody alone gives me goose bumps), the tune has been embraced by Socialists, Marxists, anarchists, anti-Fascists, workers and labor activists alike over the years, transcending nationalist and language barriers.

The most interesting aspect the film examines concerns the bad rap the song received after it was “officially” adapted by the oppressive, post-revolutionary Soviet regime. Pete Seeger (a perfect choice, no?) emcees the proceedings, with support from historians, musicologists, and multinational participants (veteran and current) in some of the aforementioned movements. British punk agitprop troubadour extraordinaire Billy Bragg also makes a brief appearance. C’mon everybody! You know the words…

Biopic, Historical drama, Royal Intrigue, War

Thin Lizzie: Elizabeth: The Golden Age (***)

April 28, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on October 20, 2007)

Alas and anon…just when you thought it was safe to assemble an armada and go back into the water, here comes another costumer concerning a certain virgin queen. Bollywood director Shekhar Kapur has re-enlisted Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush for one more crack at the old girl in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Picking up a few decades hence from where he left off in his 1998 film Elizabeth (which depicted her ascendancy) Kapur condenses a turbulent, historically significant 4-year period during Elizabeth’s reign into what appears to be a very eventful week in the life of HRM.

As the film opens, we are introduced to a much more wary and care-worn monarch (an alarmingly thin Blanchett) holding court over England’s destiny. Gone is the radiant, rosy-cheeked and free-spirited “Bess” who lit up the screen in the previous film; she has been replaced by a mercurial, slightly paranoid monarch constantly on guard against duplicitous well-wishers and sycophants. Even close confidants are kept at arm’s length, especially her Machiavellian “spymaster”, Sir Francis Walsingham (Rush).

The Queen has two big headaches keeping her on edge. The first is her cousin, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland (Samantha Morton, in a fiercely intense performance) who feels she is the rightful heir to the English throne, not the childless “bastard” Elizabeth (who is a Protestant to boot). Mary has some influential Catholic sympathizers at home and abroad, including the other royal pain in Elizabeth’s derriere, King Philip II of Spain (Jordi Molla), who gets his jollies jeering at the English queen and rattling his saber.

Elizabeth finds a temporary distraction from all her political woes when the dashing adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen, in all his rangy glory) strolls into her court, full of tales and loaded with booty from his latest excursion to the New World. Elizabeth is obviously charmed, but has to suppress her schoolgirl crush for sake of appearances. However, when she learns that Raleigh has fathered a child and secretly eloped with her favorite chambermaid, Bess Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish) she is not so amused, and gives him a nice cozy jail cell to explore for a few years. Not to worry, however-history intervenes and the Queen pardons Raleigh in time to put him in charge of naval defenses in the year of the Armada (1588), which fuels the climactic (and rousing) battle scenes.

This is one of those “historical” epics where you have to make a decision going in whether you are going to nitpick and get cranky over odd factual inaccuracies and anachronisms, or just sit back and bask in the opulent pageantry and bodice-ripping court intrigue with a shit-eating grin on your face. Keep in mind, the screenplay is by William Nicholson, who scripted the (very) loose re-invention of the Camelot legend, First Knight, and Michael Hirst, who wrote for The Tudors, Showtime’s recent mini-series about the reign of Henry VIII. In other words, this ain’t Masterpiece Theater, folks.

Kapur seems indecisive; as if he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to make an updated version of Fire Over England (which depicted Elizabeth and Raleigh embroiled in court intrigue in the year of the Armada) or pay homage to The Sea Hawk (the swashbuckling action scenes featuring Owens in full Errol Flynn mode will definitely make history majors twitch). Nicholson and Hirst’s dialogue fuels some spirited exchanges between Blanchett and Owen in the first half of the film that reminded me of the clever repartee from Shakespeare in Love, but it ultimately clashes with some of the heavier moments later on (Samantha Morton nearly steals the movie in her execution scene, but it seems to belong in a different, darker-toned film).

If you are a genre fan, you’ll be pleased. Blanchett is excellent in the lead role, and Owen is charismatic as always. Rush is good, although his character is a bit one-dimensional (not his fault). One thing for sure-this should be the last of Liz the First for a while. Right? Tell me there isn’t another one in pre-production. Prithee (sp.?), tell me.

60's Counterculture, Art world, Biopic, Drug Culture

Thursday’s child is Sunday’s clown: Factory Girl **1/2

April 27, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 18, 2007)

(This review is based on the “extended” director’s cut of the film that appears on the DVD; I have not screened the original theatrical version.)

One of the more interesting trends to emerge with the narrowing window between the moment a first-run film leaves the multiplex and its DVD release is what I like to call the “auto repair cut” of box-office flops (“OK, I think I’ve found the problem -try starting it now.”)

Consider George Hickenlooper’s extended cut of Factory Girl, his biopic about the pin-up girl of the 1960s underground, Andy Warhol discovery Edie Sedgwick. Plagued by production problems and prematurely rushed into theaters late last year, the film did marginal box office, and was even less enthusiastically received by some of the surviving real-life participants in the Warhol Factory scene

Edie Sedgwick was the Paris Hilton of the 1960s; a trust fund babe imbued with no discernible talent aside from the ability to attract the paparazzi by associating with the right people at just the right places at just the right time. Despite growing up as a child of privilege, Sedgwick’s childhood was less than idyllic (two of her brothers committed suicide and her mother was institutionalized).

She arrived in NYC in the mid 60s and was drawn to the downtown art scene, where she was spotted by Warhol. Taken by herwaif-like beauty, he vowed to make her a “superstar”. He featured her in his experimental films, and she became the iconic symbol of the “Factory”, where Warhol worked on his projects and played host to a co-op of avant-garde artists, musicians, actors and hangers-on.

Sedgwick fell from grace with Warhol when she became strung out on various substances and was financially cut off by her family. She sought treatment and cleaned up, only to tragically die of a drug overdose at age 28.

Hickenlooper’s affection for the subject is evidenced in his canny visual replication of the 60s underground art scene; he alternates grainy, b&w film footage with saturated 16mm color stock and utilizes hand-held cinema verite shots, aping the look of Warhol’s own experimental films. The fashion, the music, and the overall vibe of the era is pretty much captured in a bottle here.

But what about the narrative? Ay, there’s the rub. The director’s pastiche plays like the Cliff’s Notes version of Warhol and Sedgwick’s partnership. A lot of things are left unexplained; peripheral characters come and go without exposition (it wasn’t until the credits rolled that I learned tidbits like “Oh, that was supposed to be Moe Tucker from the Velvet Underground?”

In a narrative film, you can get away with creating bit parts like “Man #2 with suitcase” or “Crazy bag lady in subway”, but when you are dramatizing a true story…well, I think you see my point. (Ironically, the 30 minute documentary extra on the DVD, featuring recollections from friends and family. offers more insight into what made Sedgwick tick than the full length feature does).

You can’t fault the actors. Sienna Miller gives her all in the lead role and does an admirable job portraying the full arc of Edie’s transition from an innocent pixie, fresh from a pastoral country estate, to a haggard junkie, encamped in a dingy room at the Chelsea Hotel.

The always excellent Guy Pearce “becomes” Warhol. It’s not as easy as one might think to convincingly inhabit Warhol’s deadpan persona; actors have made valiant efforts (David Bowie, Jared Harris and Crispin Glover) but generally end up doing little more than donning a white wig and delivering a rote lank stares and signature catch phrases (“Umm, yeah. That’s great.” “Yeah, hi.”).

Even the traditionally wooden Hayden Christensen registers a pulse with his performance and delivers a spirited impression of Bob Dylan. Sorry-did I say ‘Bob Dylan’? I meant to say, ‘Billy Quinn’ (as in “The Mighty Quinn”?), referred to as a “famous folk singer”.

Factory Girl is perhaps not quite as dismal as many have led you to believe, but it is still not as good as one might have hoped.

Biopic, Radio Biz

Bless CC and its vanilla suburbs: Talk to Me **1/2

April 27, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 4, 2007)

“Wake up, goddammit!” As far as daybreak salutations go, that may not be as sanguine as, let’s say, “goo-oood morning, VietNAAAM!”, but for D.C. radio personality Ralph “Petey” Greene, it was all part of “keepin’ it real” for the better part of two decades.In the new biopic, Talk to Me, director Kasi Lemmons tackles the true story of the ex-con who went on to become an immensely popular DJ, community activist, comedian and TV show host in the Washington D.C. market from the mid 1960s up until his death in 1984.

Don Cheadle (who co-produced) delivers another amazing performance…and it’s a good thing too, because it is the saving grace in a film that might otherwise play out like a glorified episode of WKRP in Cincinnati. His portrayal of the fast-talking, streetwise Greene grabs your attention from the get go, as we find him working his first DJ gig-broadcasting live and direct from the warden’s office over a jailhouse P.A. system. Judging from his fellow inmates’ reactions, it’s clear that Greene has a natural gift, not only for being entertaining, but articulating what his audience is thinking as well.

In 1966, Greene is released, and through a series of machinations (and sheer chutzpah) manages to ingratiate himself with Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor), program director of Washington D.C. soul station WOL. Against his better judgment, Hughes puts his job on the line and gives the motor-mouthed hustler a shot in the air chair.

Greene’s on-air debut is dramatized in a somewhat apocryphal manner (did he really open the mike and refer to Berry Gordy as a “pimp” right out of the starting gate, much to Management’s chagrin?) but the scene is representational of a pivotal point in radio history where some DJs were transitioning from the superficial Wolfman Jack/Murray the K/Cousin Brucie school to becoming “real” personalities who expressed an idiosyncratic world view.

Before long, Greene’s candid ruminations on the social issues of the day, as well as the urban black experience in general strikes a chord with the D.C. radio audience. Dewey Hughes soon senses an even larger potential for Greene to parlay his talents into stand up comedy and TV as well, offering to manage his career.

After a promising start, the 3rd act gets bogged down in tired VH-1’s Behind the Music-style clichés that have plunged other potentially great films into banality (Bird and Ray come to mind). The film is ultimately about yet another gifted performer squandering his or her potential through substance abuse and/or self sabotaging behavior. Haven’t we suffered through enough of these?

I would have liked to have seen a bit more attention to detail in the depiction of the radio station milieu. I admit this is a pet peeve because I have worked in the radio business since 1974, so I tend get nit-picky . And if I see one more movie set at a radio station that features a scene where a DJ barricades himself inside the studio and continues to talk while Management and/or security guards struggle to force the door open, I’ll rip off my headphones and run screaming into the sunset. It just doesn’t happen in real life (that often).

The supporting cast is good. Taraji P. Henson portrays Greene’s long suffering girlfriend, Vernell Watson, with aplomb (and a nod to Pam Grier). Cedric the Entertainer hams it up as late night DJ “Nighthawk” Bob Terry (recalling Venus Flytrap on WKRP). Also with Martin Sheen, who feels a bit squandered here as a cartoon GM who gets to fume and sputter and pound the studio window whenever Greene’s antics get too risqué and scream cornball lines like “What in the blue blazes do you think you’re doing!?”.

Still the film is worth watching for Cheadle and Ejiofor’s tandem performances. They are both charismatic and talented actors, with an onscreen chemistry that could turn them into a Newman-Redford sized juggernaut, should they decide to work together again (hopefully, with a better script next time out).