*Black Snake Moan

Directed by Craig Brewer
Written by Craig Brewer

One day, the wife of grizzled blues man Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) decides to leave him for someone with "more life" (Lazarus’s younger brother – ouch!). Isolating himself with pain, hurt, and drink, Lazarus one day happens upon the half-dead form of town trollop Rae (Christina Ricci). He decides to take her in, to try to save her, and in doing so save himself as well.

Not nearly as trashy as its ad campaign would have you believe, Black Snake Moan is actually kind of sweet – as sweet as a movie involving a nymphomanic chained to a radiator can be, anyway. It’s actually a lot like A Walk to Remember, if Shane West was a girl and Mandy Moore was a grizzled old blues man, with anger issues rather than cancer, and instead of Christian shame there was a chain, a radiator, and...well, more Christian shame. Other than that, it’s pretty much the same movie.

You know the drill – first they hate each other, then they kind of like each other, then they have setbacks and breakthroughs and more setbacks and more breakthroughs, family members are confronted, roots of problems are discovered, the two go from liking each other to depending on each other, lessons are learned, and in the end everyone is happy (or, at least, a better person).

So why the recommendation? The story is entertaining, the acting engaging (though the sight of Christina Ricci’s emaciated form is disturbing to say the least, especially in light of recent developments), there’s an excellent soundtrack, and the ending was satisfying. I was a happier person for having seen the movie. Much like how I felt after watching Brewer's earlier (and much better received) Hustle & Flow (which you KNOW would have been festooned with a similarly lurid marketing campaign had studio execs thought that film would have any kind of audience to begin with).

Like I said, sweet. If you can get past the idea of a nymphomaniac chained up to a radiator.