Joseph Sargent 2004 USA
Starring: Alan Rickman, Mos Def, Kyra Sedgwick, Mary Stuart Masterson, Gabrielle Union
Mos Def has always enjoyed more credibility than most other rappers in film, having largely avoided the gangland roles Tupac Shakur frequented and not having sold out like Ice Cube, whose once passionate refrains of Fuck Tha Police have now been entirely nullified by him playing a brutal policeman for laughs in the abominable heap of fuck that is Ride Along. Now Def's career has reached a level where he's being hired for his abilities rather than his name value and is actually putting in good performances. It's the case in Joseph Sargent's true story of pioneering heart surgery and racism, Something The Lord Made, and it only helps that he's starring opposite Alan Rickman, an actor who, despite usually getting the best lines, has a tendency to overplay allowing his co-stars' subtlety to shine through and be handed most of the acclaim. It's a strangely fitting piece of casting as in the film a role reversal of sorts take place with Rickman's Alfred Blalock given all the credit for the medical breakthroughs that he and Def's Vivien Thomas make and largely unable to acknowledge Thomas due to his race. Blalock is a really complex character brimming with the arrogance of a man of his standing but still displaying uncommon benevolence, seemingly completely unbothered that Vivien is black but uncompromisingly open about segregation being an everyday occurrence that isn't going to change, at once innovative and paradoxically accepting of the things he cannot change. Even his work is similarly multifaceted - while he is almost obsessive about saving people his experimentation is carried out on stray dogs that he often infects purely so he can try and cure them. That he's not treated merely as a hero and portrayed complete with faults and blurred morality is encouraging and it's a typically excellent performance from Rickman. For his part, Def is wonderfully delicate and understated, constantly confounding his mentor with his intelligence and inventiveness but always stopping short as if fully aware of his station, his confidence only growing gradually and organically as the central relationship develops. The direction meanwhile is decent if unspectacular and unfortunately only rises above the average in one scene where Vivien is forced by a pedantic security guard to punch in like the other black workers in the shadow of a statue of Christ (not to mention the incongruous image of Christ in the middle of a medical college). Like a lot of HBO presentations this is a slick production, albeit one that could have used a more confident, masterful touch, but is constantly pulled above past disappointing works by the quality of its leads. It only makes me wish that all rappers could make this much effort when on screen, rather than making people conjure up fond memories of Cold As Ice.
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