Truly Dreadful Film

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Excellent movie! I hightly recommend checking it out. I went to go see it when it first showed in chicago last December. I really wish more movies like this would come out. i would like to see more "black" movie producers produce movies of substance and stop with the stereotypical garbage! High five to Tanya Hamilton! Great job to all the actors and actress who started in the film as well. The ending of the film leaves one yearning for more. I would like to see a part two if this is possible. I look forward to checking out more of her movies in the future.peace, Akil

For those who say where are the black dramas look no further.I enjoyed this movie from beginning to end and recommend it to anyone who loves quality story telling and great acting.Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington give awesome performances and the story is so deep and engorging you can't help but be sucked in. I always find it amazing that quality films such as this have a hard time seeing the light of day (or moonlight for that matter)even though we are inundated with channels through our various cable/satellite packages. Is it a conspiracy? I'll leave that up to people smarter than me, all I know is this is a terrific movie and a must see. Dick-SmoothDrama radio

"Night Catches Us" is the best art-house film I've seen in several months. In fact it bests a lot of the current main-screen fare. It deserves better than the quiet and uneven release it seems destined for.I saw it back-to-back with the Oscar contender "The King's Speech". It balanced the double bill reasonably well. Although "The King's Speech" is of course superior, the comparison wasn't simply ridiculous.I saw it twice ...which I often do with films I really like, as I tend to miss too many things the first time.It's not moralistic. Both sides of survival vs. justice, violence vs. pacifism, united front vs. paranoia, victims vs. victimizers, and this generation vs. the next generation are portrayed sympathetically. Although at first glance one particular style of being seems to be being touted over the others, just a little reflection reveals that the film actually revels in moral ambiguity. Some characters manage to stay on the good side of the respectability line at all times, even while their inner demons are picked up and expressed -sometimes in socially unacceptable ways- by others around them. The camera notices more latent contradictions than the story ever delves into. For example the reverend was apparently beloved by the neighborhood, yet also lived in by far the finest house in the whole area.The film isn't a polemic and doesn't seem to consciously attempt to portray cops in a bad light. Yet it doesn't shy away from sketches of substantial police bad attitude and violence."Night Catches Us" makes liberal use of art-house stylistic conventions. For example the confused, tangled, and partially submerged thoughts of a character are portrayed not by talking about them or even by seeing them in action, but by long leisurely shots from underneath of the crossed branches of overgrown vegetation. For another example, a character's longing for stability and tranquility is portrayed by lengthy shots of the proverbial babbling brook.I wasn't irritated by the pacing. The film is by no means an action flick or a taut thriller, but I didn't find it like watching paint dry either. I tend to like slower paced films anyway (which of course doesn't mean everybody else will too:-). The most similarly paced movie that comes to mind is Clint Eastood's recent "Hereafter"; if you thought that was impossibly slow you'll probably have the same reaction to "Night Catches Us", but if that character exposition and portrayal of small events grabbed you this likely will too.All the action takes place over just a few days in 1976. A block of important events that happened about a decade earlier is described mainly through bits of dialog. There are no visual flashbacks nor dream sequences (except of course for the occasional interspersed archival Black Panthers footage).I found the acting quite good. It doesn't bowl you over as the greatest thing you've seen in years; but it's by no means "just workmanlike". Quite often meaning is communicated not by dialog but by subtle body language or facial expressions, which the actors seem fully up to. Both the individual characters and the chemistry between the characters are believably convincing.I found the situation (or plot if you prefer to think of it that way) simple and complex at the same time. It's simple in that once you finally grasp it you can describe the whole thing in one short paragraph, and in that if you're one of those people who instantly "get" most movie clues you might be able to divine the whole thing well in advance. On the other hand it's complex in that it's revealed only one tiny bit at a time -sometimes in dialog and sometimes visually- so the whole movie can become a "mystery" to be solved if that's your preference.

Somewhat dreary film about a guy coming to his hometown after his father's death after several years of being banished for snitching on the local black panther organization (of which he was a member.) While it'd be nice to report that it was an original and daring film about a subculture that few films are ever made about,(and a nicely textured one at that) the events and drama that happen during the film for the most part are pretty run of the mill standard issue guy reconnects with long lost love of his life while revisiting old stomping grounds melodrama.While the idea of several ex black panther party members trying to move on with their lives is an intriguing one, and one that is handled with a great deal of technical skill by the director...the screenplay doesn't really seem to develop many of the characters. If you think i'm wrong, just keep in mind that at the end of the film we don't know anything more about the Anthony mackie character then we did at the beginning. When he suddenly announces he has to leave....the announcement only made me realize that i don't know where he's going back to, only that the events of the past 80 minutes have if anything made him even a stronger believer in his need to escape his old hometown. I suppose that the town's definition of him is the point of the screenplay---what little you learn about him, you learn via his actions when confronted with danger, or you learn via exposition provided by the other characters...but at the end of the film the only thing you really know about him is that his desire to escape the townspeople's perceived image of him--which is something that you kind of grasp within the first 15 or 20 minutes when you see how his brother treats him, or how the other people in the film treat him at first sight. The need for Mackie to escape the town and start over or he'll end up in as dangerous a situation as Kerry Washington's brother did is a good jumping off point but i'm not sure if him just reaffirming his position on that stance is as good an ending as could've been written for his character.However Mackie is at least well defined compared to the various other characters appearing here, the more screen time Kerry Washington's brother gets, the less sympathetic (or original) he comes off as. Played as a shell shocked survivor defined by the amount of damage inflicted on him by his living in the town...he's still just a wee bit unbalanced and messed up too ever really register as a fully fleshed out character...he's fed up to here with the way the white cops treat him...but did he ever not feel fed up? His one dimensional character is hard to muster up the needed compassion for which kinda takes the sting out of what ultimately ends up happening to him. With the amount of screen time that the film dedicates to him and his troubled mind, i kind of wished that once again the film would leave him in a far more interesting place or at least do more with him once his behavior finally escalated into the kind of violence that couldn't be glossed over. What happens to him is a cliché, and one that should've been made more interesting to watch. Meanwhile if Mackie is the "you can't go home again" character then Kerry Washington's brother is the stock unstable loose cannon character...then Kerry Washington's character at least remains an interesting bedrock upon which the other two characters revolve around. Belivably torn between her need to stay true to her roots in the town and the need to start over (if not for herself then for her daughter)her initial attempts to do both at the same time make her somewhat interesting , but again the more the screenplay has her relating why she has the need to stay in Philly...the less believable her reasons become. Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington as the love of his life while both offering fine restrained performances (both actors nicely underplay the anger both characters feel at their circumstances.) also have definite screen chemistry as well....and that chemistry is what ultimately keeps the film from going completely off the tracks in terms of sustaining your interest in the outcome of the story. Both actors bring a lot of good will and much likability to the characters they're playing. It says a lot about how much the 2 actors keep the film watchable and reasonably involving that in spite of weaknesses in the story, and a somewhat sluggish pacing you do root for the two of them to make it through the events of the film and end up together happily ever after--but not as much as you should be.