TALK TO ME Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
Focus Features
Grade: A-
Directed by: Kasi Lemmons
Written By: Michael Genet, Rick Famuyiwa, story by Michael Genet
Cast: Don Cheadle, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cedric the Entertainer, Taraji P. Henson, Mike Epps, Martin
Sheen, Vondie Curtis Hall
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 7/9/07
Opens: July 13, 2007 “Talk To Me” may just go down in the cinema record books as one of the two great films about radio disc jockeys. The other one, of course, is Barry Levinson’s 1987 gem, “Good Morning Vietnam.” Levinson presented a new disc jockey played by Robin Williams, shipped from Crete to Vietnam to bring humor to Armed Forces Radio. The annouoncer turns the studio on its ear and becomes wildly popular with the troops but runs afoul of the middle management who think he isn't G.I. enough. While he is off the air, he tries to meet Vietnamese especially girls, and begins to have brushes with the real war that never appears on the radio. “Talk To Me” may sound derivative of that picture, since after all it’s about a fellow who is hired, reluctantly at that, to bring humor to radio listeners of Washington, DC, who becomes wildly popular with the black citizens. He runs afoul of management, and while he already has a girlfriend, he could easily meet scores of others if he so chose. “Talk To Me” is, moreover, about a real guy, one who died at the age of 53, a fellow who had his ups and downs, or, more accurately, his downs, his ups, and his downs again. The movie is exhilarating for the first two-thirds, but turns serious and somber after that. Then again, what can you do about the downer conclusion? It’s based on his life and, like the man himself, the film is real. “Talk To Me” features an awards-worthy performance by Don Cheadle as Petey Greene, but that’s not all. If any awards group has a trophy for the year’s best two-man chemistry (in addition to the usual category for ensemble acting), Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor will be at the top of those lists as well. Ejiofor plays Dewey Hughes, program director for a D.C. radio station, who hires Petey Greene, later becoming his manager as the D.J. moves on to higher planes. Ejiofor is no straight-man but one who does not merely react to the comic gestures of his man. He is profoundly changed himself. Director Kasi Lemmons, with many acting roles to her credit and known as well for being at the helm of “Eve’s Bayou” (about a Louisiana doctor with an attractive wife who has a weakness for his beautiful patients), opens the drama on Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who, meeting with his convict brother Milo (Mike Epps) hears a charismatic d.j. on the prison radio. Since Hughes, the program director of WOR-AM in Washington, is pressured by his boss, E.G. Sonderling (Martin Sheen) to do something about the sinking ratings of the station, he lets himself get talked into hiring the d.j., Petey Greene (Don Cheadle) to replace the current humdrum announcer. After a rough beginning, Petey a heavy drinker and smoker released from jail years after his armed robbery conviction, wows the city’s black audience by “making it real” (talking about pimps and ho’s and the like, a style just coming into being during the late sixties) between the soul records he spins on the R&B station. On the night that M.L. King Jr is murdered, Petey uses his credentials with the city to calm the riots and is later moved up the ladder by Hughes, who–disastrously it turns out–gets his man on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Cheadle and Ejiofor are unbelievable, with good performances evoked as well from Taraji P. Henson as Vernell Watson, Petey’s flamboyant girlfriend, and from Martin Sheen as the uptight boss who comes around to love his hip d.j. when the ratings soar. Terence Blanchard’s soulful soundtrack, which includes the Supremes’ “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” and Otis Redding & Carla Thomas’s “Tramp,” complements Warren Alan Young’s production design–which features a view of Washington on the verge of being burned down on the night of King’s murder. Rated R. 118 minutes © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online | 
