Black Or White Review

A Race To The Bottom

Kevin Costner has had one of the more bizarre cinematic career resurgences I've seen in a while. while someone like Matthew McConaughey has built his comeback on the likes of True Detective, The Lincoln Lawyer, Magic Mike, Dallas Buyers Club and Interstellar, Costner seemed to get a massive boost solely from a Hatfields & McCoys miniseries. After appearing in only two movies from 2008-2012, he's managed to pop up in five different movies over the past year and a half, with two more to come this year. The reason such a comeback puzzles me is because none of the performances I've seen (I haven't watched the aforementioned Hatfields & McCoys miniseries) were that good. I've never seen him give a wretched performance or anything, but two of his 2014 films wound up being among the worst of last year.

Black Or White, his most recent endeavor, isn't quite that bad, but it does continue my befuddlement over Costner's resurgence. Here, he plays a man named Elliot, taking care of his granddaughter Eloise (Jillian Estell) by himself after his wife dies. The little girls other grandmother Rowena (Octavia Spencer) wants to have more custody of the child, leading to a court battle that brings up long-standing tensions between Elliot and Rowen's son, whose Eloise's father. This plot summary sounds like it has the potential to be a buffet of weakly executed cliches, and alas, the movie more than delivers on that promise.

Chef among such poorly done trite elements is Elliot, a character whose depth begins and ends with his alcoholism. Costner tries to play up that trait of Elliot primarily by occasionally speaking in a low-pitched voice that makes it sound like he's auditioning for the role of Groot. Not helping matter is how his relentless crankiness keeps him from really connecting with the viewer; like Carl Fredrickson from Up, he's an older dude whose cranky demeanor stems form the passing of his wife, but unlike that wonderful PIXAR creation, Black Or White never really develops Elliot into an engaging character aside from his cranky tendencies. It doesn't help that his daughter, after playing a major role at the start of the movie, vanishes for much of the movie after a plotline involving her growing distant from Elliot comes and goes in a flash.

Considering how poorly written Elliot and Eloise are, it's no surprise to me that the movies numerous emotional moments, which mainly center on the duo, are all pretty much dead on arrival. Similarly failing in this movie is Rowena, a character that wastes the considerable talent of Octavia Spencer. Rowena doesn't have much of a purpose here except to drive conflict against Elliot and deliver "poignant" monologues. That might be fine if any of it were successful or had substance, but as you might imagine, her character fails to achieve success on both fronts. She at least gets more depth than her characters brother, a lawyer played by newly revealed misogynist Anthony Mackie who pretty much just shouts or delivers ultimatums in his screentime.

As we come to the conclusion of this review, this is likely a good as time as any to address the films racial undertones. The cringe-worthy title alone indicates the film will deal with racial material, but weirdly, the film only pulls out that topic a few times. Here's the thing though; when they do focus on the topic of racial matters, it's the focus of the scene. Suddenly, the movie gets all the nuance of an after-school special, especially when Kevin Costner delivers a final courtroom speech about how he deals with race on a regular basis. The movies sporadic and heavy-handed use of the topic really is bizarre, especially since they preach for racial tolerance while populating the film with tons of African-American character cliches. Black Or White comes off as a film that wants to use Kevin Costners resurging star power to say something powerful about race, but instead, just comes across as forgettable in it's execution.