Mea Culpa
Tyler Perry’s high-gloss, soft-core legal thriller is too preposterous for words.
Loopy loopholes: Kelly Rowland and Trevante Rhodes
His art hangs alongside Basquiat, Warhol, Derrick Adams and Sam Gilliam. Yet his kitsch paintings are terrible, lacking the self-mockery of, say, Jeff Koons. Besides being a bad artist, Zyair Malloy (Trevante Rhodes) is a womaniser, gives off an air of smug arrogance, is constantly high and has been described as a sadist by his ex. Now he’s accused of the murder of his last girlfriend, with the evidence, DNA and a $3 million life insurance policy virtually locking him into life imprisonment.
Chicago lawyer Mia Harper (Kelly Rowland) could do with a simpler life, supporting a husband, Kal (Sean Sagar), who’s lost his job for drunkenness and has sold the piano to pay for a new watch for his mother’s birthday (without telling Mia). While Mia works all hours, Kal sits at home playing video games and drinking beer, whereas his mother belittles Mia at every opportunity (if only he had married his old girlfriend…). Now Kal’s brother Ray (Nick Sagar), a legal prosecutor, has decided to bury Malloy as a springboard to his mayoral aspirations. Mia, a defence lawyer, has been forbidden by her mother-in-law to represent Malloy, so, obviously, she embarks upon the impossible…
Really? This is the sort of set-up that John Grisham would avoid like Ebola, because it’s beyond the realms of the remotely possible. Not a line of dialogue feels as if it were spoken by a genuine human being, the background music coats the proceedings like flock wallpaper and the air of derivation is so thick that you can’t breathe. Writer-director Tyler Perry, who appeared in the vastly superior (but not dissimilar) Gone Girl – in which he played Ben Affleck’s defence attorney – should sue himself for plagiarism. He’s taken juicy bits from other movies and then ramped them up to new levels of improbability. There’s a bit of Hitchcock here (the Herrmannesque string section), a bit of Get Out there and a plethora of glossy 1980s’ thrillers.
Netflix is selling this as a steamy thriller, but Mea Culpa is neither steamy nor thrilling. There’s a tasteful scene of coitus à la Jackson Pollock, but that’s as novel as it gets, while Kelly Rowland is choreographed to within an inch of her brassiere. Perry directs as if auditioning for a Christian Dior gig but forgets to ask his actors to change their facial expressions. Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight) utters his dialogue in a monotone, even when Mia reminds Malloy that he may be facing lethal injection (forgetting that, in Chicago, the death penalty was abolished in 2011). “What do you want me to do?” he pleads, in his best bedside manner. Mea Culpa is so bad it might almost be watchable, but not quite.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Kelly Rowland, Trevante Rhodes, Nick Sagar, Sean Sagar, RonReaco Lee, Shannon Thornton, Kerry O'Malley, Arianna Barron, Angela Robinson, Gene Weygandt, María Gabriela González.
Dir Tyler Perry, Pro Tyler Perry, Dianne Ashford, Will Areu, Angi Bones and Kelly Rowland, Screenplay Tyler Perry, Ph Cory Burmester, Pro Des Sharon Busse, Ed Larry Sexton, Music Amanda Delores and Patricia Jones, Dialect coach Damian Darnell.
Tyler Perry Studios-Netflix.
120 mins. 2024. USA. UK and US Rel: 23 February 2024. Cert. 18.
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