88, 2023.
Written and Directed by Eromose.
Starring Brandon Victor Dixon, Naturi Naughton, Orlando Jones, Thomas Sadoski, William Fichtner, Amy Sloan, Jonathan Camp, Kenneth Choi, Michael Harney, Shellye Broughton, Jeremiah King, Kelly McCreary, Ben Lewis, Anthony Lee Medina, Elimu Nelson, Pegah Rashti, Alesha Renee, Jon Tenney, Julian Wadham, Vinny Chhibber, and Jonathan Weir.
SYNOPSIS:
The Financial Director for a democratic super PAC behind a frontrunner presidential candidate investigates donations uncovering a conspiracy.
Give writer/director Eromose credit for an imaginative mind. 88 is filled with intrigue and crackpot conspiracy, yet ends without doing much with it. There’s not much resolution once the curtain is pulled back, and while it’s clear that those revelations are meant to leave one thinking after the credits roll, there are also just as many unanswered and confounding aspects.
While Eromose has clearly studied greats of the political thriller genre, aware of how to keep the narrative clean and engaging to follow with tension and mystery, the nuttier moments give the impression that he has played Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid games, as villains launch into exposition monologues (complete with cutaways to stock images) and important political figures blur the line between good and evil, with an anonymous group pulling the strings.
The issue is that Eromose doesn’t quite thread any of those intersecting plot threads into something fully rewarding. His screenplay is also bogged down by unnecessary family drama that only pads onto the running time while taking away from the more exciting zany aspects. However, occasional clips of an interview between a reporter played by William Fichtner and Democratic presidential candidate Harold Roundtree (Orlando Jones), pressing him on various topics, do give food for thought on whether or not he is aware that the majority of his campaign funding is coming from Nazis making donations coded to always add up to 88.
At the center of this investigation is Femi (Brandon Victor Dixon), the financial director for Harold’s super PAC, a numbers cruncher that first notices the suspicious numerical coincidences and alerts them to blogger Ira Goldstein (Thomas Sadoski), who reports back that the number dates back to the Nazis and is a means for them to communicate out in the open. If you think that’s a spoiler, 88 goes in so many different directions that it’s probably impossible to spoil everything that happens.
What can be said is that there are out-of-place but friendly bankers on who has racism worse between Blacks and Asians, an activist mother staunchly against the plot of the Black Panther movies, and who doesn’t like her son to be around his white uncle cop (until the story demands she has a change of heart, of course), and some bizarre visual flourishes that bring to mind the simulation (at one point one character asks another character if they have seen The Matrix).
Then there are the moral questions regarding campaign money, who among the campaign runners are comfortable looking the other way when it comes to dirty money, where it comes from, and whether or not the US government truly controls it. 88 doesn’t wrestle with any of these questions emotionally or profoundly, so it’s mostly all intrigue and little substance, even if it is well-crafted and acted. It’s two hours of setup for something far more fascinating that will probably never get made.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
