Check Out the Trailer

This might not be a film for everyone, but those who like challenging hyper-cool cinema will rejoice. When your plot deals with a black bluesman in the South chaining a nymphomaniac white girl to the radiator in his house, you’re skirting the edge of good taste. But Craig Brewer, the director of the wonderful pimp to rapper flick HUSTLE & FLOW, knows that his exploitation premise is really just the framework to tell an iconic redemption story.

Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson, PULP FICTION) is a former blues singer who farms to make a living. His wife has just run off with his brother. The local preacher R.L. (John Cothran Jr., THE CELL) is keeping an eye on him so that he doesn’t stray too far of the path of righteousness due to his anger and bitterness over the break-up of his marriage. One morning, he finds the young white girl Rae (Christina Ricci, PUMPKIN) lying in the street by his mailbox, beaten severely and only wearing a short top and panties. He takes her back to his house and watches over her as she fights fever. When Lazarus learns that she is a nympho who has been sleeping with every Tom, Dick and Harry in town since her boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake, ALPHA DOG) went off to the army, Lazarus decides to chain her to his radiator and cure her of her sinful ways.

There is no other actor on the planet better suited to play Lazarus than Samuel L. Jackson. It was role made for him. And he is simply amazing. Ricci embodies her role and makes it seem so real when it so easily could have been ridiculous. It was essentially that the two leads be believable or we wouldn’t buy a moment of the grand, gothic tale. Jackson and Ricci both give one of the best performances of their careers. They won’t be receiving Oscar nominations, but they deserve to.

Brewer embarrasses the over-the-top exploitation vibe the story originates from, but rises above it by developing compelling central characters that we care about. We feel the emotions of the bad hand Lazarus and Rae were dealt in life. They’re sinners who are struggling to be better, but the world keeps knocking them down. Thematically the characters are very similar to those in HUSTLE & FLOW. Tonally Brewer does a masterful job of balancing between raw emotion, sly humor, smoldering sexuality and a gritty, sweaty coolness. This has cult hit stamped all over it. Brewer is two for two — I can’t wait for what he does next.

BLACK SNAKE MOAN finds the heart and emotion within sexploitation films and brings that to the forefront. Brewer wants to titillate our minds more than our lower regions, which in the end is sexier than all the T&A he could have crammed in the film. Southern gothic has been redefined.