Title: They Cloned Tyrone
Rating: 4 Stars
Fontaine (John Boyega) is a drug dealer. Although seemingly set in something like the present, his neighborhood seems reminiscent of the 1970s. Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) is a pimp that owes Fontaine money. Yo-Yo (Teyonah Paris) is a sex worker for Slick Charles.
Slick owes money to Fontaine. After going to Slick’s motel room and grabbing money that Slick owes him, Fontaine gets ambushed by one of his rivals and is shot dead.
Fontaine wakes up the next morning with no memories of what happened. He goes to Slick to collect the money that he is owed. Slick, knowing that Fontaine has been shot dead, is understandably shocked when Fontaine shows up at his door.
Slick and Yo-Yo manage to convince Fontaine that something strange is going on. When they investigate, they end up at an abandoned house. At the house, a closet is actually an elevator. When they descend in the elevator, they discover a lab. Among other things, they discover a corpse that looks exactly like Fontaine.
This leads them into an even deeper investigation that ultimately upends their lives and all of their notions of reality.
I don’t want to say anymore because this is a relatively new film and much of the fun of the film is watching it unspool.
First things first. This film is fun. It is quite funny. In particular Jamie Foxx as Slick Charles is hilarious. For those too young to remember, Foxx was a highlight of the In Living Color series. He is an outstanding comedic actor. Here he leans into every stereotype from a 1970s blaxploitation film yet at the same time brings out the decent humanity of the character. For whatever reason, the Academy doesn’t seem to acknowledge / reward comedic acting performances. Here’s hoping that an exception is made for Foxx. I think his performance is that good.
I saw a review that called this film an Afrofuturistic neo-Blaxploitation. Another review called it retro-futuristic. Both of these terms seem accurate. There are clear homages to Blaxploitation films. There are the larger than life characters of Slick Charles and Yo-Yo, both attired in the garish finery of 1970s sex worker culture. At the center is Fontaine, a quiet, determined, nearly stoic character that has a foundation of honor and sorrow. As we learn more about the sordid details of the conspiracy that the three find themselves in, we see the sci-fi elements. We see a state of the art clone farm. We see scientists and workers teeming in underground labs. When the three leads enter this world, there will inevitably be a conflict between these contrasting worlds.
Yet this film is so much more than that. There are many themes at play here. One theme is Black genocide. Another is corporate greed and its attempts to subjugate, manipulate, and mind control entire communities to get them to acquiesce to their dismal existence. There is a nod to the fact that, in their own way, drug dealers, pimps, and sex workers have their own role to play in getting communities to this acquiescence.
This film plays into conspiracy theories that have taken hold in Black communities. Actually oppressed for centuries, it’s not exactly surprising that such conspiracies take hold. I’m talking about such theories that AIDS was genetically designed to attack the Black community and that the government intentionally introduced crack cocaine to weaken the Black community (which, when you learn about Iran-Contra, isn’t exactly a crazy hypothesis).
For me, although the first two-thirds of the film is brilliant, it falters a bit in bringing it to a close. Again, without going into details, it manages to make the conspiracy that the three are exposing to be personal to Fontaine.
I understand why, for plot reasons, that this was done. However, by personalizing the plot to Fontaine, it takes away from the systemic condemnation that it was on course for. To me, it’s one of the big disappointments when comparing the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes to the original. Although Burton’s version is so much technically better than the original, it somehow manages to make the whole Planet of the Apes to be the fault of the protagonist. In the original, at its climax, Charlton Heston realized that we did it to ourselves.
The whole tone of the film seemed to be leading to this systemic conclusion. I was disappointed that the film didn’t follow through.
Despite that, it was a pretty awesome film. On my blog, I’ve referred often to the AFI list. One of its significant omissions is that only one black director, Spike Lee in Do The Right Thing, makes the list. Films like this (and many other films like Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Boots Riley’s Sorry To Bother You) show that, given the opportunity, that people of color will create entertaining and innovative films in their own voice that deserve a slot in the list. Hopefully, if the AFI list is ever updated, this diversity will be much better represented.
dorkenstein 