Clik here to view.
What is life like after being locked up in prison from age 15 to 30? How do you adjust to an outside world without the human development skills your contemporaries have?
Writer/director Rashad Frett has a clue and explores it, along with co-screenwriter Lin Que Ayoung, in his intense, harsh reality, post-incarceration drama.
The film introduces Ricardo “Ricky” Smith (Stephan James, “Race”) as he walks nervously around his old Hartford, Conn., neighborhood, disoriented in a place where he once ran the streets. Hoodlums threaten him. People are standoffish, wondering where he’s been. The little self-esteem he musters comes from his hair-cutting skills. He’s a barber. He can make a living. And he must. His parole officer (Sheryl Lee Ralph) is on his case, and he has to attend group therapy meetings, get on someone’s payroll, and rehab himself.
Fortunately, Ricky has a great camaraderie with his younger brother James (Maliq Johnson, TV’s “The Equalizer”). Unfortunately, a testy relationship with his strong-willed Caribbean mother (Simbi Kali) keeps him off-kilter. He has reconnected with old friends and bad influences like Terrence (Sean Nelson, “Fresh”); flirts with Jaz (Imani Lewis), a young single mom from around the way; and is hotly pursued by the older woman (Andrene Ward-Hammond) from his ex-offender’s support group. It would all be much easier to navigate if Ricky had parental training, a strong father figure, positive role models, and friends he could trust. He doesn’t.
He tries to pull his life together and stay out of the pen despite lacking coping tools, maturity, and basic discipline — like being on time. Ricky’s a man/boy living in a man’s world that has passed him by. He’s a vulnerable novice in dealing with technology (smartphones), dating etiquette, rules of the street, and sexual interludes. The script sets the character’s persona and situation well. You know where his heart and ambitions are, but that doesn’t negate his lack of abilities. For every good choice he makes, there’s a bad one. It’s easy to blame the system or his home life, but it’s really on him.
Holding it down for formerly imprisoned young men who’ve done their time and sought salvation is the intuitive actor Stephan James. In his hands, Ricky’s inner turmoil feels real. It’s a pity that the character’s anxiety is too often depicted with visual tricks and the filmmakers didn’t trust James’s angst to do the job. His approach to Ricky is more like a subtle Ice Cube roaming the neighborhood than a Denzil Washington imposing his strong-willed character. James doesn’t overact; he inhabits the role.
Ralph is the exact opposite: Her performance is showy, and she isn’t helped by cumbersome dialogue. Love the natural portrayals by Johnson as the jovial sibling, Lewis as the love interest who gives Ricky hope, and Ward-Hammond as the lecherous witch who abuses him.
Frett’s direction is unobtrusive. Very casual. Involving. Like you’re just hanging out with the good and bad angels on Ricky’s shoulder, tagging along for the ride. No wonder his cinema verité style won Frett a 2025 Sundance directing award.
Frett can share accolades for the film’s pacing with editor Daysha Broadway. Sam Motamedi’s cinematography deftly captures faces in cars, sex scenes by lamplight, and the awkwardness of car crashes. Production designer Aariyan Googe’s taste in interiors and exteriors reflects a working-class neighborhood. Everyone’s clothes look like they’re off the rack from T.J. Maxx, thanks to costume designer Ari Fulton. Any musical score that includes Nat King Cole singing “Fallen Leaves” and the hip trio of Alex Isley, Masego, and Jack Dine jamming on “Good & Plenty” sets a nice cross-generational vibe.
The footage cruises by in an hour and 49 minutes, and the rhythm doesn’t die until the audience has exhausted all hope for Ricky taking charge and turning his life around. If he doesn’t, what’s the point of the film? If he does it too fast, will it feel too Hallmark-greeting-card easy? The former is more the case. It’s easy to feel like the plotline slams too many heavy, negative incidents against the protagonist — Ricky, “I never thought I’d live this long.” Neither will the audience. Ricky finding redemption becomes a sticking point that will stymie audience appeal.
Frett and the script will pay a price for not taking Ricky out of his failure spiral soon enough, although anyone watching this ex-con in the ’hood tale will appreciate Frett’s directing — an instinctive sense of guidance to an everyday reality that feels lived in.
For more information about the Sundance Film Festival, visit https://festival.sundance.org.
The post Filmmaker Rashad Frett wins at Sundance for ‘Ricky’ appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.