Review of Luce (2019) by Greatmartin — 06 Sep 2019

"Luce" is a picture with many questions and very few answers, not giving you enough information to know what the questions are!

We have a white couple (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) who adopted a black 7 year old boy(Kelvin Harrison Jr.) who was born in war torn Eritrea, Africa, and now is a model teenager who went through intensive therapy to be the perfect student and son. He is a soon-to-be valedictorian, a track star, football player, the debate team captain and to one of his black history teachers (Octavia Spencer) he represents what every black male should be who may or may not overstep her authority. She feels women must stand up for themselves using a student( Andrea Bang)) who may or may not have been assaulted by school jocks as an example and that men must be certain way.

Luce, (Harrison Jr), writes an essay the history teacher (Spencer) asks the class to submit assuming the voice of a historical figure and instead of using someone like FDR as the teacher expected Luce uses the voice of Frantz Fanon, a French West Indian psychiatrist and revolutionary who talked about violence as a weapon.

The screenwriters JC Lee and Julius Onah do not give you enough information on many points and Onah, who also directed, confuses things further by making cuts that make absolutely no sense.

All of the cast are first class from the leads, especially Kelvin Harrison Jr, Noah Gaynor and Omar Brian Bradley as his friends with the latter losing a sports scholarship because he isn't a Luce model, Marxha Stephanie Blake as the history teacher's sister with a personality disorder plus Leo Norbert Butz as the principal of the school.

"Luce" would have been a much better movie if either it made more sense or cleared up exactly what problems were involved and/or gave more information so a sensible debate could have taken place after the movie about some, if not all, the issues brought up.