In the rural Deep South, older black man Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) discovers the town tramp Rae (Christina Ricci) beaten by the side of the road. The rather unstable Lazarus decides that for her own good he needs to hold her in bondage and forcefully inflict some moral education on her while nursing her back to health. Rae's fiance Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), who had been away in the military, returns to find there is a lot of troubling talk in town about his girlfriend.

I didn't know quite what to expect from this movie, as everything I had read described it as a highly controversial film - really daring, erotic, shocking in its treatment of women, either racist or purposely evoking racist themes precisely to puncture them, etc., etc.

Then I watched it, and frankly I thought it was boring, and mostly silly. I never really believed any of the characters, never much cared about them.

I had the sense that whatever grander points filmmaker Craig Brewer was trying to make so dominated his approach that the other things that make a movie compelling or believable or entertaining were compromised.

I didn't find any of it particularly offensive. If anything the sex and violence are too cartoonish to take seriously enough to be offended by (or to have a favorable reaction to).

It has some potential for awhile to be an interesting portrayal of the mental illness of Lazarus, but that doesn't really go anywhere. We see, in simplistic fashion, how the input - the messages he's received from an emotional sort of fundamentalist religion, racist and sexist attitudes in the air, and his personal experience of being wronged by his wife and brother - has come together in a perverse little stew and left him behaving in an erratic and sometimes insane manner. But then - with the help of some laughable pseudo-therapy sessions where various of the characters talk about their issues and emotions with each other and a helpful preacher - he pretty much "gets over it." He decides to be a caring father figure toward the woman he's been holding in bondage, and she sees that he's a good guy at heart after all and just wants to help her, and everybody lives happily ever after.

Ricci plays the slutty white trash girl in a thoroughly over the top manner, perhaps intentionally if this isn't supposed to be taken literally and is just a lot of shock and symbolism.

The blues soundtrack, which includes songs sung by Samuel L. Jackson, is quite good, so I'll give the film that much.

Certainly this is different enough from mainstream movie fare to get one's attention, but ultimately it turns out to be of little merit, and too silly to earn the controversy it seeks. It may be most appealing to cult moviegoers who appreciate movies that aren't bad in a run of the mill way, but in a humorously interesting, outlandish, unusual way.

Learn more about this author, Philo Gabriel.
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