Black Snake Moan [2006]
Director: Craig Brewer
Actor: Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake, John Cothran, Jr.
What a great little gem of a film. I didn’t really know much about it going in, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The acting is pretty solid on all fronts, but Sam L. does an especially good job playing the elderly, god-fearing, blues-singer-turned-farmer who is lost his wife to his younger brother. Ricci does a fantastic job of playing the very beautiful, but damaged Rae, who, due to early childhood abuse, has become a nymphomaniac in the clinical sense of the word. (She compulsively engages in sex without any real desire to do so, and without actually enjoying it.) Timberlake plays Ronnie, a kid who joins the national guard in order to better the life of himself and his girlfriend Rae, but he finds that he suffers from anxiety attacks whenever his stress-levels go up, and so is kicked out of the army. A great performance for Timberlake, who had a lot of balls to play the man who gets cheated on, and is in essence a weak man who means well but falls up short.
Anyway, the story is as followed; Rae sees her boyfriend Ronnie leave for the army, even though she begs him not to go. Rae decides to party away her sadness, and ends up partying a little bit to hard. She gets beaten and left alongside the road in front of Lazarus’ house, a man who’s an avid blues fanatic, but has just been left by his wife. He decides to take in and rehabilitate Rae, even going so far as chaining her up so that she can’t escape until he has excercised her deamons. It turns out that Lazarus and Rae are eachother’s help through their hard times. They are exactly what one another needs.
A great film with solid acting, a refreshing story and fantastic blues performances by Samuel L. Jackson. Well worth it.