One of the Best Movies of 2004

In brief: Electrifying. A perfectly written blend of corporate/political thriller, sitcom, and family drama.

Running time: Approx 2 hours and 30 minutes.

In the interest of full disclosure, Spike Lee gave me a headstart with this review. At the top of the show, before last night’s premiere began, he spoke at a mike before the filled auditorium of the Loews Astor in Times Square, and told the crowd what the movie was about. No spoilers or anything, but what the movie was essentially about. Although he warned us that there was a lot of things in the movie, it was essentially about the importance of family. This didn’t spoil the movie for me, because the movie doesn’t start off as one about family, at least not in any way that is obvious, but seemingly as a corporate thriller. Anthony Mackie plays John Henry “Jack” Armstrong, a Harvard MBA executive at Progeira, a biotech firm anxious enough to launch its newest AIDS vaccine, Prexelin to engage in some unethical dealings to get it on the fast track to FDA approval. After Jack informs on his bosses, an investigation into their business dealings by the Securities and Exchange Commission and well as a tragedy involving another coworker leads to his firing, the freezing of his assets, and what he calls a “high-tech lynching.” With his financial and occupational situation in dire straits, and his own parents suffering their own personal problems, he gets a sudden visit from his ex girlfriend-turned lesbian, Fatima, and her girlfriend Alex. Fatima and Alex want to have children, and don’t want to go the route of sperm banks, and knowing Jack’s recent financial woes, want Jack to impregnate each one of them for $5,000, all spelled out in a contract in which he gives up his parental rights.

What at first seems an imperfect solution to his financial problems leads to an ongoing deal with the Devil that provides some excellent character conflict with Fatima and Alex, involving the sexual politics of infidelity, promiscuity, homosexuality and parental responsibility. The strictly anti-hetero Alex wants to obtain and inject Jack’s sperm using a turkey baster, whereas Fatima wants to obtain it the old-fashioned way, which leads to questions about her feelings for Jack, and the reemergence of long-buried pain about their breakup that has never been resolved, a situation that puts a strain on Fatima’s relationship with Alex. Whereas Fatima and Alex are initially introduced as a pair of seemingly opportunistic, even somewhat manipulative businesswomen, this character work is at the heart of Spike’s film, serves to flesh out Fatima and Alex into more sympathetic, three-dimensional characters, and leads to some frank discussions of hot-button topics. This is all exacerbated for Jack when Fatima, seeing an even greater opportunity, decides to hook Jack up with several other lesbians, each one paying $10,000 for a romp in the hay with the fertile sperm donor, of which Fatima naturally gets a 10% finder’s fee. This not only causes him further doubt about the morality of his actions, and his responsibilities as a father, but makes his situation with the SEC even worse, particularly given the connections of one of his customers in particular, Simona (Monica Bellucci).

Spike Lee and Michael Grenet’s story deftly weaves the SEC/Progeira storyline and the Fatima/Alex storyline together seamlessly, allowing each one to grow logically out of the other, like narrative hydra, leading to a legal climax in which Jack must rail against not only his former employers, but against a system he feels is rigged against whistleblowers who try to do the right thing, and are rewarded for it with destroyed lives. It is here that the movie becomes a vehicle in which the filmmakers make a not too-subtle statement about society’s hypocrisies, at times degenerating into a Michael Moore-like revisionist diatribe, particularly when Jack compares himself to people like FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley, WorldCom whistleblower Cynthia Cooper, and Enron “whistleblower” Sherron Watkins, an utterly ridiculous comparison. Never mind that Watkins and Rowley weren’t really whistleblowers, despite the title slapped on them by Time magazine (the December 22, 2002 cover of which featuring the three of them is shown on screen), since the information they provided was in private internal correspondence that others leaked or gave to the press, rather than that which they chose to give to the authorities themselves, which is what whistleblowers actually do. Never mind that none of these women suffered as Jack has. Cooper was given a raise and a bigger staff. Rowley was not fired. Watkins, while demoted at her job and having had her hard drive confiscated, ultimately quit. None of them were jailed or had their assets frozen, and the cover of Time magazine doesn’t seem too shabby to me.

Even more preposterous is when Jack compares himself to Watergate security guard Frank Wills, who didn’t blow any whistle, nor have any secret information he revealed to authorities or the press, but merely called the police when he realized a break-in was in progress at the famed building. I don’t see why the film portrays Wills as a metaphorical predecessor to Jack, and as a victim of the Nixon administration in the same way that Jack is a victim of his employers, since this did not happen to Wills. Sure, he was not overrewarded for the foiling of the break-in (aside from what he was paid for merely doing his job), did a year in prison for shoplifting (his own fault), later had to live with his mother on her Social Security, had to donate her body to science when she died because he couldn’t afford a funeral, and had to continue living in her house with no electricity or running water until he died eight years later of a brain tumor, but that’s hardly the fault of Nixon’s henchmen, nor did he suffer as a result of his calling the police on the break-in. As a result of his act, he received an award from the Democratic Party and the Martin Luther King Award from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference - its highest honor. He was in demand as an interviewee by the press corps, charging $300 for interviews (though only some reporters took him up on it), and he even got to play himself in All the President’s Men. His subsequent unfortunate life appears to occurred despite his flirtation with history, rather than because of it, perhaps because he overestimated his worth as a celebrity—he once claimed to have "put his life on the line” for what he did, as if calling the police and having them enter an office with guns drawn to foil a third-rate burglary, as the break-in has been called, wasn’t his job, or perhaps a dangerous one, which he subsequently quit for their refusal to provide paid vacations, later claiming that he couldn’t find work again because, as he suggested, "They are being told not to hire me or if they are just afraid to hire me." One wonders why the Democratic Party didn’t give him a job, but all this is hardly their fault, much less Nixon’s staff’s, as Jack’s father Geronimo (Jim Brown) seems to imply in a heart-to-heart talk with him. One wonders why Wills needs to be the metaphor here, rather than say, true whistleblowers who suffered for their moral acts, like Brown & Williamson whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand. Is it because Wigand is white, and cannot be portrayed as an accurate parallel to Jack?

This aspect of the movie would have greater credibility if it did not distort facts to the point of self-parody, and allowed the story to rest on its own merits, rather than as a thinly-veiled rant against the Bush administration and corporate America, but fortunately, this is not the focus of the movie, which, to its credit, knows that its heart is the conflict between Jack, Fatima, and Alex, which is wrapped up in an unconventional ending that I correctly guessed at, but which wasn’t telegraphed, and certainly was not part of the paint by the numbers book of endings for relationship movies. The film is powerful, funny, outrageous, and thoughtful. It entertains while also making the viewer question what they would do in Jack’s situation, and is another triumph for Spike Lee, and one of the best films of 2004.

I HIGHLY recommend it.



"Revenge is a dish best served cold"

-Old Sicilian Proverb