Night Catches Us (2010)
Directed by Tanya Hamilton
Written by Tanya Hamilton
Starring Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington, Wendell Pierce
Release Date December 3rd, 2010
Published December 7th, 2010
A number of movies have tackled the story of the Black Panthers as they rose and became a force on the national scene. Their charismatic leaders became icons and their movement became a legend. As the civil rights era wound out the Panthers seemed to lose their way and many of their stories faded with the movement.
Director Tanya Hamilton takes us back to the time just after the Panthers heyday and in “Night Catches Us” gives us a composite story of the people who lived the legend and what happened to them in the wake of such astonishing drama, revelation, struggle, sadness and in some cases triumph.
It's 1976 and Marcus Washington (Anthony Mackie) is returning home to his South Philadelphia neighborhood for the first time in nearly a decade. Marcus left under a cloud of suspicion after one of his fellow Black Panther Party members was shot and killed by police. The remaining panthers came to believe that he ran because he sold the dead man to the cops.
Now, with his preacher father having passed away, Marcus returns to find many of the tensions he escaped still boiling. Marcus's brother Bostic (Tariq Trotter, The Roots) has become a devout Muslim who maintains a grudge but is more civil than most. The remaining Panther leader, Do Right (Jamie Hector) has allegedly turned to crime and intimidation as the tools of revolution.
Do Right makes his feelings clear by vandalizing Marcus's car, leaving the word 'snitch' etched into the side of the black caddie left to Marcus by his late father. The one person who welcomes Marcus back, even into her home, is Patricia (Kerry Washington), the wife of Marcus's former Panther brother who was killed by police.
The history between Marcus and Patricia is thick with meaning and in it “Night Catches Us” has a strong romantic/dramatic hook. Sadly, the rest of the plot hinges on characters whose actions are forced and used only as plot drivers, as if director Tanya Hamilton felt she didn't have enough juice in Marcus and Patricia's relationship to move the film forward.
Amari Cheatom plays Jimmy, Patricia's troubled cousin. Jimmy has a painful encounter with local cops that leads him on a path to the kind of militancy he believes the Panthers stood for. You might think Marcus would try to stop him but there would be no point, Jimmy is a creation of the plot meant to push conflict.
Stronger supporting performances come from Wendell Pierce as a corrupt cop holding Marcus's most difficult secret and young Jamara Griffin as Patricia's 9 year old daughter Iris. Pierce brings back fond memories of his performance as a much better detective on HBO's The Wire. Griffin is a young talent to watch, a natural actress with terrific instincts and a distinctive face.
When “Night Catches Us” is focused on Marcus and Patricia, their past and possible future, it is deeply moving and evocative. Setting their story, their past, with that of the Black Panthers, including archive footage to underscore the importance of the struggle they were fictionally part of, gives it a fiery context that encompasses them, their neighborhood and all around them.
Jimmy, unfortunately, is a dramatic contrivance that distracts from the main story of “Night Catches Us” and leads us to believe that there is not enough in the main story to give the film the drive it needs to get to a satisfying conclusion. Too bad, Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington indeed do deliver the goods. There was no need for contrivance, no reason for writer-director Hamilton to lack confidence and undermine her main story.
