One of 2007's Better Efforts

isabelle1955

When I first watched this movie in the theatre a couple of months back, I was certain I'd seen some of the year's best performances. Watching it again last night on DVD, I'm still certain of that, but equally I'm puzzled as to why this movie didn't do better in theatres? As well as the performances, it has a reasonably well written script, a compelling story based on a real life character, some well known actors and a sound track so good I went online and bought it the next day.

Maybe I'm showing my age? It's based in the 1960's around the time of the Civil Rights Movement. I was just a kid but I remember it well, even from my viewpoint across the Atlantic. Audiences seem to cope fine with future fantasies, current times and history prior to the last fifty years, but recent history often seems to sink without trace. Bobby, set in roughly the same time period, also disappeared rapidly from theatre screens. Maybe it's only boring old codgers like me who find this stuff interesting anymore?

Ralph "Petey" Greene, well played by Don Cheadle, was quite a character if this movie is to be believed (and there are those who say it shouldn't be believed too much.) An ex-con (he rather liked the term 'miscreant'), after getting out of jail he talked his way into a job as DJ on a Washington DC radio station WOL–AM at just the right time. Ratings were falling and the station was losing touch with its largely black, poor and urban fan base. Greene was blazingly honest, radical and a compulsive communicator. He spoke up on air about social injustice and racism, giving the station a hard time occasionally with the federal authorities who license the airwaves, but rapidly becoming a popular local voice for the African-American community at a time of enormous social upheaval and change. His Program Director Dewey Hughes (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor who was so good last year in Inside Man) apparently took a huge risk putting him on air but went on to become his manager. It has to be said the movie was written by Hughes' son, so may be very biased in his favour.

The story takes us through the late 60's, the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, the riots that followed, and into the 70's, complete with the fabulously awful clothes and haircuts of the time (I remember them all too well!) and the great music. Greene was instrumental in calming DC down after Dr King's murder in '68, talking movingly on air to his listeners as the streets burned outside. He introduced James Brown at a memorial concert the next night, and then went on to success on TV. Those at least are facts. I think...

But like most interesting people, Petey Greene apparently had his demons. And that's where opinions diverge. According to the movie, drink and drugs caught up with him all too often. He had a tumultuous relationship with his girlfriend Vernell (lively performance by Taraji P Henson) and eventually split from Hughes. Greene's family has maintained that Talk to Me misrepresents him as a drug fuelled womanizer, and certainly I have no idea where the truth lies. What is known is that he died at 53, and over 10,000 mourners turned out for his funeral, still the largest gathering for any non-elected official in DC history, that Dewey Hughes is still alive and successful, living in LA, and apparently no one is talking to anyone else involved in this project.

Which is sad. But it is nonetheless a pretty good movie, and it should have done better than it did.

score /10

isabelle1955 17 January 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1801887/