

#CAST OF DEADWOOD SEASON 3 TRIAL#
Trial of the Chicago 7 makes for an emotionally tough watch – though an exhilarating one too, given the torque of Sorkin’s talk. However, thanks to a heavy-weight cast (Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Joseph Gordon-Levitt) this is as gripping as they come. An eighth defendant, Bobby Seale (played here by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), was also bundled into this "all-star team" of revolutionaries by Richard Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell.Īaron Sorkin could have directed this as a straightforward courtroom drama. In September 1969, seven members of the radical left were lumped together and charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot the charges related to anti-Vietnam War and countercultural protests held in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The desperate, eloquent force of his performance gives this muscular film added punch and poignancy. Boseman’s wiry, angry Levee brings the film’s real charge, however, giving every rippling horn improv, fierce God-taunting rant, and soft-shoe shuffle the urgency of a man racing to make his mark with his art. The film is swept along by its two potent central performances, Davis generating hefty diva-power with her proud, obstinate, blues-preaching Ma, determined not to be reduced to a ripped-off voice. The film is adapted from the August Wilson play of the same name, and Denzel Washington produces. InsideĬontaining Chadwick Boseman’s final performance, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom stars Viola Davis as the eponymous Ma Rainey, a singer known as the "Mother of the Blues." Set across the course of one afternoon in 1927, tensions rise as Ma Rainey challenges her manager and producer – while Boseman’s Levee, a trumpeter, has ambitious plans of his own. An almighty gunfight is on the blood-rimmed horizon. Also in the volatile mix is legendary US Marshal Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo). Only Buck has reteamed with his own posse – ‘Treacherous’ Trudy Smith (Regina King), Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), and more. So what we have here is a fictional revenge tale that entangles lives that, in some cases, never did cross, as Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) – aka Deadwood Dick – reconvenes his old gang, including former flame Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), to take down fearsome outlaw Rufus Buck (Idris Elba). But Samuel and his co-writer Boaz Yakin (Now You See Me, 2012’s Safe) aren’t past playing fast and loose with history themselves, albeit in less harmful ways. Many of the larger-than-life characters in The Harder They Fall are historical figures. Like Mario Van Peebles’ 1993 oater Posse, The Harder They Fall by Jeymes Samuel (aka London singer/songwriter The Bullits) looks to change things up and have a blast doing it, with its starry Black cast trading shots in thrilling sequences of stylized violence set to quality music.

It’s estimated that a quarter of cowboys were Black, but you’d never know it from Hollywood westerns, which so whitewashed American history that Mel Brooks found provocative humor in having a Black man holding the reins in 1974’s Blazing Saddles.
