No Salt On Her Tail

Samuel L. Jackson does so many movies, it's no wonder most of 'em are rotten. But occasionally, when he has a good director and script, he reminds us why he gets a chance to make so many in the first place. Black Snake Moan is one such movie.



The performances by Jackson and his acting partner Christina Ricci are far and away the best part of the film, their scenes together are easy to imagine as a stage play. In that sense it reminded me of Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel's work in Holy Smoke, a film it resembles in one or two other surface ways as well.

This is a much better movie than that was, but sadly not perfect.

If you've heard anything about it at all, you've probably heard that Ricci spends much of the time with her body on display in cutoff t-shirt and white underpants or less. This is true, and yes, she's hot and sexy, if distressingly gaunt at times (this may have been a character choice, to be fair). But that doesn't (and shouldn't) overwhelm what a good performance it is.

Ricci comes across here a lot like Susan Sarandon does in films from the first few years of her career, all naked (in both senses of the word) sensuality and big eyes. But she's better than Sarandon was at the same age when it comes to convincing us that this person, in this situation, would act exactly the way she does. Everything she says seems to come from deep inside her (of course, she already has much more experience than Sarandon had at her age).

Even Justin Timberlake, it must honestly be said, shows a modest talent in his role. But he is also the least helped by director Craig Brewer's screenplay. Everything about his character seem imposed on the script, rather than living in it as Jackson and Ricci do.

He's a plot device, pure and simple, and Brewer doesn't seem to have cared about him as anything else. At least, he didn't put the work in of making us care. And he clearly expects us to in the end. More on that in a moment.

This might seem like I'm wandering a bit, but trust me, I'm going somewhere. The movie Escape To Witch Mountain has a lot of memories for me, not least because the first half hour or so of it was filmed at the Peninsula School, where I attended theater and music classes as a teen.

So it was a (literally, for me) jaw-dropping surprise to see that the actress playing Christina Ricci's mother in this film is former teen actress Kim Richards of the Witch Mountain movies and Hello, Larry. It's an an entirely belivable performance, too.

Brewer deserves credit for helping his actors get those performances, and the movie does look good, even beautiful once or twice. Remarkable considering it was filmed on location in that state.

(One character in the movie is a white trash, woman-beating, acquaintance-raping, quarter-dick racist. I can't remember his name, but I like to think of him as "The Spirit Of Tennessee.")

But back to the script...I had an easier time accepting the film's first, bizarre premise than the sentimental phlegm it coughs up at the end.

An old, formerly great bluesman (the wall-to-wall music adds greatly to the film's impact) attempts to "cure" a young nymphomaniac by keeping her a prisoner in chains? I'll buy that for four bucks.

I'm not just being glib. At least he's trying to help her even in his own fucked-up way. Something which, the movie takes great pains to show us, no one among her friends or family is doing or has done.

As I say, any time Jackson and Ricci are alone onscreen together, the film works. But when the movie tries, at the end, to make us care as much or more about the least-interesting character (Timberlake's) as we do about the two of them, it left me wishing the film had ended 25 minutes before it does.

A bit of ambiguity would have gone down a lot better than the slick, quasi-sugary way in which this film attempts to tie up loose ends.

But then, any movie in which "escaping" to Knoxville is the plan of any major characters is not the kind of thing I can wholeheartedly support.

Lower the curtain down on Memphis...