(**1/2)
What is life like after being locked up in prison from age 15 to 30?
How do you adjust to an outside world without the human development skills your contemporaries have? Writer/director Rashad Frett has a clue and fathoms it, along with co-screenwriter Lin Que Ayoung, in his intense, harsh reality, post-incarceration drama.
Ricardo “Ricky” Smith (Stephan James, Race) walks nervously around his old Hartford, Connecticut neighborhood. Disoriented in a place where he once ran the streets. Hoodlums threaten him. People are standoffish, wondering where he’s been. The little self-esteem he musters comes from his hair cutting skills. He’s a barber. He can make a living. And he must. His parole officer (Sheryl Lee Ralph) is on his ass, and he’s got to attend group therapy meetings, get on someone’s payroll and rehab himself. .
Fortunately, Ricky’s has a great comradery with his younger brother James (Maliq Johnson, TV’s The Equalizer). Unfortunately, a testy relationship with his strong-willed Caribbean mother (Simbi Kali) keeps him off kilter. He’s reconnected with old friends and bad influences like Terrence (Sean Nelson, Fresh), flirts with Jaz (Imani Lewis), young single mom from around the way, and is hotly pursued by the older woman (Andrene Ward-Hammond) from his ex-offender’s support group. It would all be much easier to navigate if Ricky had parental training, a strong father figure, positive role models and friends he could trust. He doesn’t.
As he tries to pull his life together and stay out of the pen, he does so lacking coping tools, maturity and basic discipline—like being on time. Ricky’s a man/boy living in a man’s world that’s passed him by. A vulnerable novice with technology (smartphones), dating etiquette, rules of the street and sexual interludes. The script sets the character’s persona and situation well. You know where his heart and ambitions are, but that doesn’t negate his lack of abilities. For every good choice he makes, there’s a bad one. Easy to blame the system or his home life. But it’s really on him.
Frett’s direction is inobtrusive. Very casual. Involving. Like you’re just hanging out with the good and bad angels on Ricky’s shoulder tagging along for the ride. No wonder his cinema verité style won a 2025 Sundance directing award.
Frett can share accolades for the film’s pacing with editor Daysha Broadway. Sam Motamedi’s cinematography deftly captures faces in a cars, sex scenes by lamplight and the awkwardness of car crashes. Production designer Aariyan Googe’s taste in interiors and exteriors reflect a working-class neighborhood. Everyone’s clothes look like they’re off the rack from T.J. Maxx, like they should, thanks to costume designer Ari Fulton. While any musical score that includes Nat King Cole singing “Fallen Leaves” and the very hip trio of Alex Isley, Masego and Jack Dine jamming on “Good & Plenty” is setting a nice cross-generational vibe.
The footage cruises by in 1h 49m and the rhythm doesn’t die until the audience has exhausted all hope for Ricky taking charge and turning his life around. If he doesn’t, what’s the point of the film? If he does it too quick, will it feel too Hallmark greeting card easy? The former is more the case. It’s easy to feel like the plotline slams too many heavy, negative incidents against the protagonist. Ricky, “I never thought I’d live this long.” Neither will the audience. Ricky finding redemption becomes a sticking point. One that will stymy audience appeal.
Holding it down for the young formally imprisoned men who’ve done their time and sought salvation, is the intuitive actor Stephan James. In his hands, Ricky’s inner turmoil feels real. Pity that the character’s anxiety is too often depicted with visual tricks and the filmmakers didn’t trust James’ angst to do the job. His approach to Ricky is more like a subtle Ice Cube roaming the neighborhood than a Denzil Washington imposing his strong-willed character. James doesn’t overact; he inhabits the role. Ralph is the exact opposite; her performance is showy, and she isn’t helped by cumbersome dialogue. Love the natural portrayals by Johnson as the jovial sibling, Lewis as the love interest who gives Ricky hope and Ward-Hammond as the lecherous witch who abuses him.
Frett and the script will pay a price for not taking Ricky out of his failure spiral soon enough. Yet anyone watching this ex-con in the hood tale will appreciate Frett’s directing. An instinctive sense of guidance to an everyday reality that feels lived in.
Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute.
For more information about the Sundance Film Festival go to: https://festival.sundance.org
Visit Film Critic Dwight Brown at DwightBrownInk.com.