Trying to make plans that involve more than one other person can feel like blindfolded maze solving. Imagine making a movie, the smallest of which requires trying to make plans that involve far more than one other person. The art form’s challenge is part of its appeal. The communality it requires, the artistry and effort needed from folks on screen and behind it, means every movie is a mini-miracle.
That’s why watching something like Mickey Hardaway stuns me. The microbudgeted black-and-white debut from writer/director Marcellus Cox is palpably a labor of love. The simple, earnest, painful story reflects admirable ambition and authenticity. It’s not a perfect film, succumbing to the familiar first-time feature filmmaker flaws of uneven performances, stilted pacing, and bloated dialogue. Eh, so what?
We forgive big-budget blockbuster their “sins” freely. Deadpool & Wolverine has already made half a billion dollars, and it’s just Ryan Reynolds doing his bit from Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place with a CGI budget equal to the national defense budget. This is to say that whatever Mickey Hardaway lacks in polish and sheen, it overdelivers in its sincerity and took guts to create.
For example, think of the moxie it takes to have your film’s titular character, the movie’s emotional tether, shoot a man in cold blood in front of his wife in the very first scene. Getting an audience to sympathize with a murderer isn’t easy, but it’s also the very thing Cox is asking us to consider. Can we look past ugly ends and confront the cruelty that caused it, specifically when it comes to Black communities?
Mickey (Rashad Hunter) is a talented young artist who loves his girlfriend Grace (Ashley Parchment) and hates his father, Randall (David Chattam). Both are understandable. Grace is patient and kind. Randall is every worst paternal possibility distilled into flesh. He beat Mickey in his youth and actively worked to deny his dreams of drawing. Mickey may have fired the film’s fateful gun, but Randall loaded his son up to be a weapon.
After escaping his hellish home, Mickey finds some success in his field. When those hopes are dashed, he turns to therapy. Dr. Harden (Stephen Cofield Jr.) does his best to triage his bleeding psyche. It does not go well. Cox isn’t suggesting that the effort is futile or condemning mental health care. He’s just mourning the life of someone too far gone. There’s only so much sludge you can pour over any heart before it stops.
Mickey Hardaway is sullen and serious, making the meticulous approach feel overlong and slow. Because it is not narratively twisty or turny, because we know we will arrive where we started, it doesn’t feel as urgent as it maybe could have. But as dour and dark as Mickey Hardaway is in theme and subject matter, it is all optimism when taken as a whole. Cox and company have made something to be proud of, and here’s hoping they have it in them to rise to the challenge of filmmaking often.
Grade = B
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Rosalynn Try-Hane at Liquid Marmalade says “Cox’s style reminded me of a young Spike Lee, more restrained but reflecting the world rather than trying to give us a fantasy or satire.”
Lissette Lanuza Sáenz at Fangirlish says “it manages to tell a very familiar tale without getting lost in the stereotypes or relying on the cliches. More importantly, the story never pretends to portray anything other than one particular Black man’s experience, because it understands the importance of that specificity to the universal message it’s trying to tell. Violence is violence. Black violence is Black violence. Mickey’s experience, that’s his.”
DarkSkyLady says “Mickey Hardaway has flaws but remains a powerful picture that looks at the macrocosm of trauma through one Black man’s experience and how generational trauma breeds cyclical violence.”