WhatzUp

BLACK SNAKE MOAN
by Derek Neff

BLACK SNAKE MOAN

Grindhouse, the recent homage to 70s drive-in exploitation pictures, should have been a triple-feature, with Black Snake Moan sandwiched in the middle. (Yes, I know that means that the three-plus hour marathon would have been close to five hours, but in for a penny in for a pound, right?) Wedged between Robert Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" and Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof," Black Snake Moan might have worked just fine, while on its own it comes off as anemic, overwrought and downright silly.

Samuel L. Jackson plays Lazarus, a religious-minded blues musician in a small Mississippi town whose wife has just left him for another man (his own brother, no less). Christina Ricci plays Rae, a young woman given to bouts of drunken, self-destructive promiscuity despite the fact she truly loves sensitive enlisted man Ronnie (Justin Timberlake). Within hours of Ronnie's shipping out, Rae starts getting an itch that only a man can scratch, and she finds herself drinking too much and doing the same sorts of things she's always been infamous for doing around town. On the night in question, though, she winds up in the wrong pickup truck with the wrong man, gets severely beaten and is left for dead on a narrow dirt lane – which is where Lazarus finds her the next morning. Lazarus takes her inside his house, scores some medicine off a friendly local pharmacist (S. Epatha Merkerson) and nurses Rae through her worst fever-dream hours.

When Rae finally comes to, she finds that, rather than being free to get up and go back home, Lazarus has chained her by the waist to his radiator. You see, after finding out about Rae's reputation around town, Lazarus has taken it upon himself to hold her captive until she is "cured" of her sinful ways. But sex-addicted Rae's just gotta have what she's gotta have, and woe to the person who keeps her from gettin' it ...

Writer/director Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow) knows he's playing with fire here, and to his credit he doesn't shy away from the more racially charged elements, nor does he candy-coat things to make them sound better than they are. It's preposterous, sleazy, low-brow high-concept at its best (or worst, take your pick). Ricci plays Rae to the hilt, which is to say that she takes a ridiculous character and plays her, um, ridiculously. Often we praise a mainstream actor for their "bravery" when they simply appear nude and/or do something sexually frank on camera. (And it does have to be said that Ricci gets a lot of mileage out of the cut-off Confederate flag T-shirt and underwear she wears through a good part of the movie.) I'll grant that Ricci does as much with the role she's been given as she possibly can, if you'll grant that that's not a whole hell of a lot.

As Lazarus, Jackson does an admittedly fine job, giving this sad-sack blues musician a pulse and a likability that's quite remarkable, especially considering that what Lazarus does to Rae is a felony offense. Jackson is an artist with many talents, but his chief strength might be that he plays every role with equal conviction and fury, whether he's in glossy Hollywood trash like Snakes on a Plane or grungy indie trash like Black Snake Moan.

Despite its cheesy, 70s drive-in movie elements, Brewer plays this all with a straight face, going so far as to offer us corny armchair therapy of his characters along the way, and that's precisely the problem. The basic premise of Black Snake Moan is just too preposterous, too schematic and too self-consciously "controversial" to be taken seriously.