Talk to Me - B-

Recently released on DVD.

Don Cheadle plays Ralph Waldo (Petey) Greene, a prison disc jockey who begins to work for a Washington D.C radio station after he gets out of the joint in the mid-1960s. Dewey Hughes (the omnipresent Chiwetel Ejiofor) works at the radio station and is trying to convince upper management (Martin Sheen) to change with the times. He sees Greene as a man of the people who will speak directly to and for them. He succeds and goes on to meet the president and appear on the Tonight Show.

After a rocky start which includes Petey insulting white people for being successful, speaking funny, and having small penises – always hilarious by the way, the movie actually settles down for some excellent scenes. The best is a pool scene where Hughes hustles Petey who has underestimated the straight-laced career man. The insight into successful black people who are seen as Uncle Toms is spot-on. (In this movie, Petey calls Hughes “Poitier” and “Mr. Tibbs”.) A great long-take is the first time Petey is on the DC station radio. The last great extended sequence occurs with Petey dealing with the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. and trying to convince the community not to riot and burn the city down. After several more years of success, Petey begins to sabotage himself with alcohol, culminating with an intentional poor performance on the Tonight Show.

The Motown music is great (of course) and the performances are uniformly superb. Cheadle is great as the tough-talking Petey; it’s his second best performance next to Devil in a Blue Dress. Director Kasi Lemmons (Eve’s Bayou) shows a nice directorial touch with good montages and a terrific sense of humor. But Petey’s self-destruction is tough to watch. The movie falls apart with its protagonist. But the relationship between Petey and Hughes is strong; two very different men coming together to succeed. Petey comes to respect Hughes even if he sees him as a sellout. It’s an unfortunate attitude and still pervasive today. As long as a large segment of the black community sees reading a book as “acting white”, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. B-