This modern satire of corporate culture, 21st century capitalism and the state of interracial America is a winner. Cassius Greene (Lakieth Stanfield) is our bemused hero as he starts working for a call-centre, struggling to make a connection to people across the nation to sell some useless product or other. But when he’s told of the secret power of using his “white voice”, opportunities open up to him – and expose him to more surreptitious ways that corporate America plans to use him and his friends.
Director Boots Riley has a sure visual style here – this is, in some ways, Michel Gondry crossed with Karl Marx, as he captures complex issues in a few deft images and unusual sights. The cast is all-round strong – whether it be Stanfield’s bemused protagonist, Tessa Thompson back again as the artistically inclined girlfriend of the lead (it’s unfortunate in a way that this film has been held back long enough in Australia that it looks like Thompson’s stereotype next to her appearance in “Creed II”, but she’s got enough other things coming that hopefully she’ll be a lead before too long), or Armie Hammer carelessly embodying the don’t-give-a-shit nature of the wealthy as a careless corporate mogul. The satire only gets more extreme as the film goes on yet it’s never enough to break the immersion, for me – it’s a finely provocative look at the modern American landscape.
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