TaryBiggBall
It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
Tayyab Torres
Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
Fleur
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
jlongstreth-1
Night Catches Us is a love poem to a turbulent age.As a child in the 60s and 70s, watching the Black Panther movement from the comfort of my suburban middle class home, I had no idea what it all really meant to the people living the conflict. This film helps you to understand how the racial struggle impacted individual people. Death, love, revenge, resignation, acceptance, and compromise all play out in a very understated fashion.The production and continuity is meticulous. The cars, clothing, hairstyles, household items, even down to the soda cans are all carefully chosen to represent 1976. The music used is not period, but it sounds very much so, and credit must be given to The Roots for capturing the times with their own sound.The resolution, or lack thereof, is the only ending that could have been possible for this film. Patricia must continue her fight and her penance. Marcus must move on. It hurts, but it's the only right thing. Difficult to convey such hard reality to movie-going audiences who want overblown drama and unrealistic love stories. In this case, reality is pitch perfect.
Turfseer
One of the problems with many of the indie films out today is that the screenwriters have a great deal of trouble developing an organic, inter-connected plot. I'm pleased to report that Tanya Hamilton, writer/director of 'Night Catches Us', the new inner city drama set in 1976 Philadelphia, has no such problem. What's particularly impressive about Ms. Hamilton's skill as a screenwriter, is that she's able to juggle a multitude of characters, connecting them at the same time to a story that spans over a decade in time. Even better, Hamilton has a prescient, balanced view of race relations in America. She doesn't take sides and adroitly points out both the strengths and shortcomings of the various players on each side of the racial divide.Hamilton's clever plot revolves around the return of former Black Panther, Marcus Washington (played by Anthony Mackie, in an excellent, understated performance), to his old neighborhood. Marcus is not your typical knight in shining armor protagonist, as he has a checkered past, having just gotten out of prison for selling guns. His father, a successful preacher has just passed away, and his brother Bostic, now a Black Muslim, regards Marcus as a troublemaker, and bars him from staying at the family home, which has just been willed to him. Marcus has even bigger problems with his old Panther buddies, particularly 'DoRight', now a gang leader, who calls him a 'snitch' and blames him for the death of an old Panther buddy, killed by the police. It seems that DoRight's buddy was married to Patricia, who Marcus was involved with years earlier.Patricia is also a complex character. She's now an activist attorney for the black community and is raising her nine year old daughter, Iris, on her own. She can't say no to her ne'er-do-well brother, Jimmy, who collects and sells cans to survive and also has a big chip on his shoulder toward the police. Along with Jimmy, Patricia now invites Marcus to also stay in her house; as a result, her live-in boyfriend packs his bags and leaves. At first, Patricia will not tell Iris anything about what happened to her father but eventually it's revealed that after murdering a cop in retaliation for the murder of two Black Panthers, he was given up by Marcus to the police in order to prevent Patricia from being arrested and Iris taken into the foster care system.The plot thickens when Jimmy picks a fight with some cops and Marcus and Iris are on the scene witnessing the confrontation. Before that incident escalates, DoRight's henchmen fire shots at Marcus from a passing car; the police, believing they are under fire, chase the henchmen in their patrol car. As a result of this incident, a black detective, David Gordon, approaches Marcus and wants him to plant a gun at a bar where DoRight hangs out. In Hamilton's view, it's not only the white cops who are capable of resorting to illegal means to enforce the law. During this scene in which Gordon approaches Marcus, he also reveals that it was actually Patricia who gave up her husband years ago and not Marcus. Marcus opts not to plant the gun and informs DoRight of the police plot.Just as Patricia recognized that her husband had to pay for his crimes a decade earlier, she comes to agree with Marcus that Jimmy is full or rage and needs to leave the home. Jimmy, now enamored with the Black Panthers after reading some old comic books about the Panthers that Marcus gave to Iris as a present, decides to take revenge on a white cop that harassed him. Jimmy buys a gun and shoots the cop while he's sitting in his patrol car. Patricia's home is invaded by cops during the manhunt for the cop's killer and Marcus is roughed up. Eventually, the police find Jimmy hiding in some bushes and kill him. The film ends with Marcus getting a new job out of state and leaving, as Patricia is unable to turn her back on her commitments to the community in Philadelphia.Instead of resorting to flashbacks to explain the back story, Hamilton intersperses film clips from the 60s, giving us a taste of the atmosphere engendered with the rise of the Black Panther movement. The excesses of law enforcement are duly noted, especially when it's revealed that Patricia has been the subject of FBI surveillance. As noted above, the police are prone to use excessive force whether provoked or not. Hamilton also doesn't shy away from pointing out the scourge of black on black violence, which is relevant to our own times.If the film has any shortcomings, it might be the decision to shoot it, in what appears to be high definition. I would have preferred to see the action shot on film stock or with a lens that recreates the era in which the film takes place. Even though this was supposed to be 1976 Philadelphia, it just didn't appear that we were watching scenes from that era. And it seemed rather abrupt how Jimmy shoots the police officer and then is killed in turn. I would have imagined that he might have hooked up with others before deciding to kill the officer or at least formulated some kind of plan of escape. I suppose we'll have to be satisfied with the explanation that this was an impulsive act of a mentally unbalanced young man. Finally, what happened to the investigation of the DoRight shooting? Do the police simply allow Marcus to leave after he fails to plant the gun?I've seen quite a number of independent films nominated for a Spirit Award so far this year, and I must say that 'Night Catches Us' is one of the stronger entries. I hope the powers that be in the film industry take notice of Tanya Hamilton whose considerable talent should be promoted by them in the future.
chuck-526
"Night Catches Us" is the best art-house film I've seen in several months. In fact it bests a lot of the current main-screen fare. It deserves better than the quiet and uneven release it seems destined for.I saw it back-to-back with the Oscar contender "The King's Speech". It balanced the double bill reasonably well. Although "The King's Speech" is of course superior, the comparison wasn't simply ridiculous.I saw it twice ...which I often do with films I really like, as I tend to miss too many things the first time.It's not moralistic. Both sides of survival vs. justice, violence vs. pacifism, united front vs. paranoia, victims vs. victimizers, and this generation vs. the next generation are portrayed sympathetically. Although at first glance one particular style of being seems to be being touted over the others, just a little reflection reveals that the film actually revels in moral ambiguity. Some characters manage to stay on the good side of the respectability line at all times, even while their inner demons are picked up and expressed -sometimes in socially unacceptable ways- by others around them. The camera notices more latent contradictions than the story ever delves into. For example the reverend was apparently beloved by the neighborhood, yet also lived in by far the finest house in the whole area.The film isn't a polemic and doesn't seem to consciously attempt to portray cops in a bad light. Yet it doesn't shy away from sketches of substantial police bad attitude and violence."Night Catches Us" makes liberal use of art-house stylistic conventions. For example the confused, tangled, and partially submerged thoughts of a character are portrayed not by talking about them or even by seeing them in action, but by long leisurely shots from underneath of the crossed branches of overgrown vegetation. For another example, a character's longing for stability and tranquility is portrayed by lengthy shots of the proverbial babbling brook.I wasn't irritated by the pacing. The film is by no means an action flick or a taut thriller, but I didn't find it like watching paint dry either. I tend to like slower paced films anyway (which of course doesn't mean everybody else will too:-). The most similarly paced movie that comes to mind is Clint Eastood's recent "Hereafter"; if you thought that was impossibly slow you'll probably have the same reaction to "Night Catches Us", but if that character exposition and portrayal of small events grabbed you this likely will too.All the action takes place over just a few days in 1976. A block of important events that happened about a decade earlier is described mainly through bits of dialog. There are no visual flashbacks nor dream sequences (except of course for the occasional interspersed archival Black Panthers footage).I found the acting quite good. It doesn't bowl you over as the greatest thing you've seen in years; but it's by no means "just workmanlike". Quite often meaning is communicated not by dialog but by subtle body language or facial expressions, which the actors seem fully up to. Both the individual characters and the chemistry between the characters are believably convincing.I found the situation (or plot if you prefer to think of it that way) simple and complex at the same time. It's simple in that once you finally grasp it you can describe the whole thing in one short paragraph, and in that if you're one of those people who instantly "get" most movie clues you might be able to divine the whole thing well in advance. On the other hand it's complex in that it's revealed only one tiny bit at a time -sometimes in dialog and sometimes visually- so the whole movie can become a "mystery" to be solved if that's your preference.
Darnell Lamont Walker
There's a beauty that lies in these shots, I kept saying to myself as I watched Night Catches Us. Simplistically, yet wonderfully told, is a story we have no seen yet. A truth that existed in 1976, not only in Philadelphia, but in Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, New York City and many other cities and towns across the country. This truth told us that, while the panthers were growing larger and simultaneously being eradicated all across the country, there were those who had non-romanticized lives outside of their affiliation with the party. While Mario Van Peeble's 1995 version of this truth was indeed true, we fell in love with the party, not with the individuals. We knew the workings of "the pig" and the maneuvers of the Panthers. Tanya Hamilton brings us to a neighborhood, to a house, to a family that wakes up, breathes and lives because they have to do these things to keep moving. Their sub story is their involvement with the Black Panther Party. Their true story is the one we don't see, but it's told to us in ways only a great filmmaker can tell it: between the lines, between the scenes. It lies in the perfect chemistry between Marcus (Anthony Mackie) and Patty (Kerry Washington). Rarely do we get lost in characters, forgetting the actor, and this was one of those rare occasions, and credit must be given to all for such a feat. These were real lives we watched on screen, real emotions, real situations, realness. There was a raw love being shown that hasn't existed since Love Jones (Written and Directed by Theodore Witcher). I would be extraordinarily surprised if Tanya Hamilton, the writer and director, was not an admirer of Charles Burnett, writer and director of Killer of Sheep. I highly recommend this film and would love to one day work with Tanya Hamilton, the creative genius.
