Sor­ry to Both­er You

Cas­sius ​“Cash” Green, the pro­tag­o­nist played by Lakei­th Stan­field in musi­cian Boots Riley’s film­mak­ing debut Sor­ry to Both­er You, is an Oak­land twen­tysome­thing with high hopes but dimin­ish­ing promise. His long­time girl­friend Detroit (Tes­sa Thomp­son), an aspir­ing visu­al artist and actu­al sign-spin­ner, still plays up his high school achieve­ments for morale’s sake. His uncle (Ter­ry Crews) is con­stant­ly hound­ing him for the four months’ rent he’s owed for let­ting Cash and Detroit hole up in his attached garage. Cash works as one among dozens of expend­able, ency­clo­pe­dia-hawk­ing tele­mar­keters for a shady oper­a­tion called RegalView, where he receives noth­ing but hang-ups from nine to five.

It’s only when an elder col­league (Dan­ny Glover) advis­es Cash to ​“use his white voice” dur­ing calls that the young man’s prospects begin to look up. Cash con­tin­u­al­ly finds and los­es him­self over the course of Riley’s deliri­ous­ly enter­tain­ing and bold­ly polem­i­cal com­e­dy by using this inner white voice – a pan­der­ing, cock­sure, and squeaky-clean Din­ner The­ater squawk that actu­al­ly belongs to actor David Cross – to become one of RegalView’s high­ly-cov­et­ed Pow­er Sell­ers, alpha-agents who reside in the lap of lux­u­ry by ped­dling some­thing far more treach­er­ous than book-sets.

From this inspired premise, Riley care­ful­ly and con­fi­dent­ly con­structs a lean­ing tow­er of auda­cious­ly absur­dist satire, which begins as a riotous send-up of code-switch­ing and ends as a scald­ing and pal­pa­bly repulsed indict­ment of the slave labor per­pet­u­at­ed by America’s cor­po­rate over­lords. Riley, front­man of the long-run­ning, polit­i­cal­ly-agi­tat­ing hip-hop col­lec­tive The Coup (which pro­vid­ed music for the movie, along with the indie out­fit tUnE-yArDs), has assem­bled a dossier of real-world wor­ries and frus­tra­tions, from the insid­i­ous reach of the prison-indus­tri­al com­plex to the tooth­less peace­mak­ing of Kendall Jenner’s cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly mis­judged Pep­si ad, and then inflat­ed them to larg­er-than-life pro­por­tions with mad-hat­ter merriment.

The result is a warped, war-torn vision of Amer­i­ca that’s nev­er­the­less painful­ly rec­og­niz­able as our invid­i­ous present real­i­ty. As a cin­e­mat­ic styl­ist, Riley has a pen­chant for pul­sat­ing neons and dense frames, but the style nev­er upstages the com­men­tary or the sto­ry he so urgent­ly needs to impart. He’s aid­ed at every turn in his mis­sion by Stan­field, a sin­gu­lar char­ac­ter actor who, in just a few short years, has solid­i­fied him­self as a redoubtable movie-improver, capa­ble of liven­ing up any scene by find­ing a unique, left-of-cen­tre way to read a line or occu­py a frame. (Roger Ebert once for­mu­lat­ed the Stan­ton-Walsh rule, which stat­ed, ​“No movie fea­tur­ing either Har­ry Dean Stan­ton or M Emmet Walsh can be alto­geth­er bad.” A sim­i­lar prin­ci­ple might be in order for Stan­field.) The actor, with his scare­crow frame and pos­si­bly the sin­cer­est eyes in movies, pulls off a sim­i­lar feat here, play­ing the role of jester with zeal but also keep­ing Riley’s film ground­ed in a place of real human emotion.

Stanfield’s inher­ent grav­i­ty becomes par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful as Riley’s script wavers in its focus with the mid-film emer­gence of a vil­lain­ous CEO played by Armie Ham­mer, inge­nious­ly cast as the beard­ed face of debauched cap­i­tal­is­tic exploita­tion, and a plot reveal that gives grotesque, lit­er­al-mind­ed mean­ing to the term ​“work­horse.” By its bonkers, tables-turn­ing third act, Sor­ry to Both­er of You has lost a bit of steam, a byprod­uct of Riley’s more-is-more habit of over­stuff­ing his stew with every­thing from repet­i­tive par­ty sequences to a tepid love tri­an­gle com­prised of Cash, Detroit, and a right­eous labor organ­is­er (Steven Yeun).

The gags con­tin­ue to ric­o­chet and if some fail to land, the film at least has the courage of Riley’s con­vic­tions to bol­ster the occa­sion­al bulky scene. The nar­ra­tive threads may fray, but Riley is nev­er less than iron­bound in his beliefs, refus­ing to soft-ped­al the moral out­rage that roils through­out the film. In Sor­ry to Both­er You, Riley artic­u­lates the social anx­i­eties of the times with craft, intel­li­gence, and imag­i­na­tion. For him, the screen is clear­ly a fun­house, but the gonzo world that has been built upon it can only derive from an artist who sees his coun­try, and all its hor­rors, with a gaze both sharp and clear.