Get On The Bus is good cinema

[deleted]

Saw for the first time on TCM last night. Very good film; still not Spike's best, but I consider it one of the better movies released in 1996.

***Some Possible Spoilers***

Because of the alphabetical credit order, Richard Belzer was credited as the first star, follwed by Junior/Smooth's character, and then Andre Braugher. They should have ordered it differently, and given Dutton, Braugher and Thomas Jefferson Byrd the top three billing spots, and Ossie Davis as the final credit.

Richard Belzer played an important role in the movie, but he only appears in less than a quarter of it. I'm at least glad Spike chose to cast him instead of some other white actor, because Belzer has always been a very well-informed and very outspoken Jewish figure in cinema and television over past couple of decades. His reasons for wanting to leave George to finish the trek is at least more because of his moral fiber than it is just a white guy who doesn't want to go to the Million Man March (and white people were there, not just reporters, either). He was really insulted by way Farrakhan had called Judaism a "gutter religion". The men on the bus should have found more in common with Rick... but they all treated him as the minorirty and constantly reminded him of where he was at, and where he was headed, as if they were trying to get him to bail out on the charter.

Soon after, the men stop at a restaurant and run into a bunch of rural-minded individuals-- what you think is going to happen never does; the white men end up having some interesting conversations with the Spotted Owl riders in the movie. It's only later when they run into the Tennessee State Patrol do they encounter any form of racism. It's a short scene (with Randy Quaud as one of the troopers, and the dog searching each black individual on the bus for substances).

Charles S. Dutton and Ossie Davis both do such a good job in this movie, it's hard to pick which of the two I liked more. In all, the only scene I really don't like is when Dutton is arguing with Belzer about his decision to leave the bus. He more or less found it to be a tense situation, and while these two are meant to be characters who've been friends for years, Dutton starts treating Belzer like he's a racist for wanting to quit.

I was surprised by the number of black actors in this film who either appeared in 'Homicide: Life on the Street' [1993-1999] or 'The Wire' [2002-2006], two Baltimore-located cop dramas. It's funny recognizing these men from television series, but after seeing 'Get On the Bus' I could recognize that 2/3 of the actors were on one show or the other (or both).

It's kinda funny picturing Detective Bunk Moreland as a cigar-chomping, racist black Lexus dealer who gets on the bus only later to be thrown off.

In the end, it kind of makes me sad to know that if a number of events hadn't occurred throughout the movie, Pops would have lived long enough to see the March (the bus gets stuck, they have to wait for Spotted Owl #2; they stop off to visit and stretch along the way and get held up in songs; Flip tries picking up on two women at a rest stop; Rick bails; and finally, Evan Jr. tries to escape, probably costing the most time as all the members of the Spotted Owl split up to go and search for him).

I also liked the final scene in the movie (the shackles at the feet of the Lincoln memorial). What a statement the movie was. I wished it had opened to a wider theatrical release originally...