After being released from prison in the late ‘60s, Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene (Don Cheadle) talks his way into a job as an early morning disc jockey at a Washington radio station. His no-nonsense style ruffles the feathers of the higher-ups, but Greene has an ally in programming director Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who sees firsthand the galvanizing effect Greene has on the urban community.

CRITIQUE

Talk to Me is a distressingly ordinary biopic made moderately entertaining by its cast. It’s yet another example of Hollywood taking the story of a true-life iconoclast and watering it down for mass consumption. Rather than being true to Greene’s life and impact, director Kasi Lemmons (who wrote and directed the infinitely superior Eve’s Bayou) and her writers have simply taken the superficial qualities of Greene’s personality and persona and plugged them into a standard misfit-makes-good plot.

The movie’s major fault is that we never really learn anything about Petey Greene. I knew virtually nothing more about him coming out than I did going in. There’s nothing that explains why or how he became the man he was, nor does the movie explore just how he affected social change.

This is a man who quickly went from serving time to hosting his own immensely popular radio show to headlining one of the first Afro-centric television talk shows, a man whose true story could have provided the impetus for a fascinating, thought-provoking movie, but that’s not what we get here. What we get here is simply more of the same old clichéd filmmaking we’ve seen countless times before.    

The movie tries to be all things to all people by mixing social commentary with both comedy and the standard elements of your average buddy flick, but the results don’t work. The social commentary is largely given over to trite platitudes masquerading as dialogue, while the comedy is so broad it verges on turning the movie into a minstrel show.

Furthermore, practically anyone who watches the movie will be able to guess the route the relationship between Greene and Hughes will take; at first they don’t like each other, then they become best friends, and then the relationship goes sour, seemingly just so they can be reunited at the end. (For all I know their real-life relationship could very well have been just that simplistic. I doubt it, but anything’s possible.)

There’s also a jarring shift in tone halfway through; once Petey takes to the air to report on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the story quickly becomes dour. The plotting also becomes incredibly choppy at this point, making several leaps forward in time, with nothing but changing hairstyles and fashions to indicate how much time has passed.

But the performances make Talk to Me worth seeing at least once. I certainly wouldn’t fault anyone for initially assuming Cheadle’s work is Oscar bait, but this is without a doubt one of the most dynamic performances of the year. And Ejiofor matches him every step of the way. Hughes could very easily have become nothing more than a sell-out foil for Greene, but Ejiofor brings a complexity to the role that quite likely wasn’t on the page.

Much the same is true for Taraji P. Henson, who plays Greene’s wife, and Martin Sheen, who plays the radio station’s manager. Both are given thankless roles, with Henson relegated to being the sassy black woman and Sheen the befuddled old white guy, but they both manage to elevate the characters above the realm of caricature.

THE VIDEO

The 2.35:1/1080p transfer is hampered by the stylistic choices employed by Lemmons and cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine. Much of the film has a reddish-orange tint, which sometimes flattens the image and robs it of detail. Grain can be uneven at times, especially during darker scenes. On the plus side, black levels are solid and exteriors and brightly-lit interiors look very good.

THE AUDIO

Universal once again supplies a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track, but the audio here is front-heavy all the way. I noticed no surround activity whatsoever, and because dialogue drives the storytelling, most of the audio information is anchored in the center channel. In fact, practically the only time the audio escapes the center channel is during the period songs that fill the soundtrack. And except for some action during the songs and a riot sequence, the low end sits this one out. An English Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 track is also included. English and French subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

Who is Petey Greene? (10 minutes) is a series of short promo-style interviews with several members of the cast and crew.

Recreating P-Town (10 minutes) looks at the movie’s music, costumes, and production design.

Closing out the extras are seven deleted scenes (10 minutes), several of which arguably should have made it into the film.

FINAL THOUGHT

Rent it for the performances. Ignore the story.