Review of 'Black Snake Moan'

This is one of those films likely to divide audiences. It could be described as a Southern tale of sin, redemption and the blues. Or as sexist trash. Either way there’s no denying the powerful work done by Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci in two wonderful central performances that undoubtedly help to make the film more than it really is.

Ricci plays Rae, a young woman unable to deal with a terrible force that, as she says, “starts in mah head, spreads to mah belly and then goes lower.” With her boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) away in the army, her sexual urges lead her to strutting around the steamy Tennessee town in cut off shorts and top, in search of something that will help scratch her itch. Anyone, it seems, will do. After a wild drug-fueled night, she is found unconscious, beaten up and near naked by Lazarus (Jackson), an old blues guitarist barely able to hold in his own passions after his wife has left him for another man. Lazarus decides that Rae is a sign from God and is determined to purge her evil ways in order to redeem himself. This involves chaining her inside his house and playing her some good ol’ Memphis blues. Music, it seems, is the best way to keep the black snake of infidelity from your door.

Writer/director Craig Brewer (who also made Hustle & Flow) works the first half of the film as black comedy and it’s delicious in parts. Ricci’s sexy waif and Jackson’s tortured bluesman are finely supported by John Cothran Jr. who plays the local Reverend, called in to pour holy water on the fires of desire. But the second half, when Ronnie returns home early from his tour of duty and when Ricci starts to wear clothes, switches to a more conventional and less successful romance narrative, with Lazarus now in charge of saving the fragile Ronnie as well. But thanks to some toe-tapping blues and because Jackson and Ricci have painted such endearing portraits for their two lost souls, there’s enough good will to get the ending over the line.