Black Snake Moan

This is how I imagine a meeting between Sam Jackson and his agent, except I will not be swearing like I imagine Jackson does.


Agent: Sam, I got a script here for you to read
Jackson: Man, you know I hate reading. What is it called?
Agent: Black snake moan
Jackson: I'm in!
Agent: Sam, remember how XXX was not about porn and how Snakes on a plane turned out to be a bad move, perhaps we should read things from now on.
Jackson: Well what is it about.
Agent: You play a former blue's musician with a biblical name and whose wife cheated on him with his brother.
Jackson: Nah, that's boring.
Agent: Oh wait, you get to chain a white girl to a radiator
Jackson: Now that's what I am talkin about, I am in!


Yes, the movie that poses the question "What would happen if a black man chained a white girl to his house radiator?" is finally here. Oh and what a movie it is. We get sex and vomiting before the first line of dialogue happens. We get an extremely hot, yet trashy Christina Ricci reaching to the depths of her inner core and ripping her inner nymphomaniac from the inside and wearing it on her outsides. No one has ever really writhed around in grass in such heat that wasn't an animal. We see Sam Jackson being his usual bad ass self and we get an almost laughable premise, yet we also get a movie that through all of its crazy over the top antics turns into a pretty touching story. Yes, I said it is touching.


First off you need to dispel yourself of the trailer. This movie is not that crazy. Yes, it has crazy is in it, but it is not founded in crazy. Sam Jackson, who hasn't acted in a few years at least gets back to his core as a very broken man, looking for any reason to hurt someone. His name is Lazarus, which obviously has some symbolism in it, yet it isn't exactly obvious. If you do not know the bible, Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus and in this movie, you can say that meeting the over acting Ricci saved his life, or brought back his dead spirit. However, he also plays the Jesus role, taking care of a girl who is in worse shape than himself. Him washing her off has obvious Mary Magdalene undertones, but that is about as biblical as the movie gets. As far as plot goes, here it is: Ricci is in love with a more than capable Justin Timberlake but he has to go off to the Army and every time she starts to remember being molested as a youth she has to have sex to make those memories disappear. One night she gets in the wrong car and gets beat nearly to death. Jackson, a farmer in the town, finds her, fixes her up and in town hears that she is essentially the town bicycle and takes it upon himself to "save her." He is trying to cure her both of her actual physical sickness and her emotional sickness.


Jackson, a veteran stage actor, gets back to his loud, but not way over the top acting style he displayed until he became "Samuel L. Jackson" as it were. He is an honest hardworking man trying to regain his life and he is quite good here. He counteracts Ricci's sometimes over the top behavior with a strong stable force. Justin Timberlake who is only in the beginning and end does a very serviceable job in a role that requires a pretty severe mental breakdown and a fair share of paranoia considering he isn't on screen much. It is sometimes hard to take him seriously because of the baby face and the voice, but I think he has it in him to be a very good actor. There are a few other supporting players, but the movie belongs to Ricci and Jackson. And, the music. Oh what music it is too. This score is powered by crazy blues guitars and that down south funk for drums. The music is inspiring, scary, haunting and yet often gorgeous creating the perfect mood. There are 2 scenes in particular where the music becomes a character. The first one is when Sam Jackson busts out his sick looking purple electric guitar for the first time and wails on it for Ricci. During the scene, the power keeps flickering off and on because of the storm and the way the music cuts in and out it is like a third character in the scene, haunting Ricci's memories and haunting the audience's ears. Also in that scene the thunder and lightening hit in rhythm making it sound very much like a percussion section.


The second time music plays into this is towards the end of the movie and symbolizes the big change in the two characters, so I won't give it away, but it is electrifying, proving that director Craig Brewer knows how to use music to emote because his most effective scenes in Hustle and Flow were also found through the scenes utilizing music. To be honest, this should have been a very gimmicky film and should have grown tired quickly but it didn't. Yes, Ricci gets to be a nuisance at times, but you forgive it because when it gets to where it is going, you are ultimately satisfied.