Everything is hotter down south.

Why aren't there more films about white women chained to radiators in small cotton panties being liberated of their wicked ways courtesy of downtrodden old blues musicians? Because if Black Snake Moan is any indication of the quality of film one can make based on such a ridiculous premise, perhaps this is a new genre that needs to be tapped into.

Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow) knows how to create fully realized broken people. On paper it hardly seems like you could have Brewer's two main characters carry the film, but somehow it all works. Samuel Jackson plays a down on his luck blues musician whose wife has left him for someone else. He is alone and seems as though his life is missing something. Christina Ricci plays Rae, a petite nymphet, who is desperately searching to find love in all the wrong places after her true love is shipped off to Iraq. These characters somehow find one another and despite some predictability the film manages to actually captivate and engender emotional response.

Samuel L. Jackson actually flexes his acting muscle in this one and takes a vacation from doing the preachy, angry parody of himself. His portrayal is honest and real. The scene with the lightning and the thunder in particular lets you really feel the soul of the character and only so much could have been on Brewer's page. Jackson makes the character sweat and cry and he hasn't done better work in years, perhaps ever. Ricci somehow manages to humanize an alcoholic, drug swallowing, sex having, sailor mouth talking, volatile young woman. She somehow creates this vulnerability that supposedly is what lures Samuel Jackson to take care of her and cure her of her wicked ways. Her performance is both fearless and impressive. This doesn't typically happen in the same film but I feel two actors have achieved personal bests performance wise.

Brewer seems to have made a logical step in the right direction after Hustle & Flow. This time he has written a more captivating story about characters that are on the wrong side of the odds again and must somehow overcome their own deficiencies. He swapped out blues for rap and keeps his setting in the dirty south. His direction is as full of life as ever and somewhere somehow next year the Academy has to create a special award for this film's costume designer. Guy's will understand when they see it.

Learn more about this author, Greg Maclennan.
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