Movie Review: Talk to Me...A Little More and a Little Less

Don Cheadle is amazing in Talk to Me, which purportedly tells the story of a hip, streetwise DJ named Petey Green, popular in the DC area around the time of Martin Luther King's assassination. More than in any role before, Cheadle is subsumed by the character he's playing. At times in the past, I've admired his acting more than loved it, but here he's the real deal.I wish I could say the same about the movie. Because it's not really so much about Cheadle as his relationship with the station manager, Dewey Hughes, who then becomes Green's manager when he branches out into a TV show and stand-up. Cheadle manages all of these transitions nicely, by showing us how Green becomes a parody of himself, much in the same way at Al Pacino these days plays Al Pacino.But Hughes isn't as interesting as Green. We don't care about him as much. We don't care that he has a brother in prison who he reviles even as he looks up to him. We don't really care that he grew up watching Johnny Carson and wants Green to be on the show. We do care when Green totally blows his shot on Carson, but that's also, oddly enough, where the movie should end. Instead it goes on for another fifteen minutes with Green mostly absent, as we see Hughes become a DJ and then buy the station. Meanwhile Green is, I suppose, off ruining his life with alcohol. Saccharine scenes where Hughes finally forgives Green for the Carson debacle, and a final funeral for a prematurely dead Green, seem pretty superfluous, and not cut from the same vibrant cloth as the movie's early scenes.Those early scenes are reason enough to watch Talk to Me, although a certain credibility seems lacking in Green's instant rise to fame. However, a montage of images after King's assassination, the power of Green's patter (the little we get of it), and Cheadle's performance offset the illogic of some of what goes on.Still, questions nagged at both Ann and me after watching the movie. Why do we learn little about Green's past? Why do we need to know so much about Hughes? Why is Martin Sheen so under-used as the station's owner? Emphasis and timing seem off. We would have much rather seen more of Green during his heyday, and less of Hughes throughout.For this reason, we're giving Talk to Me one-fourth buckwheat--our rating system based on Things to Do In Denver When You're Dead, in which one con says to another that the most painful way to die is to be buckwheated (literally shot up the ass)--while acknowledging another flawed biopic featuring an Oscar-worthy performance.