Review of [REC] (2007) by Chads. — 10 Dec 2008

Muddy Waters(Jeffrey Wright) has a number one hit song, but he's number one on the black charts. The bluesman makes "race records" that the white kids don't dance to. His success is largely invisible to mainstream America; it's a tempered success in which "Cadillac Records" shrewdly captures by not falling into the usual trappings of the music biopic.

Waters' stardom is a secret stardom; the filmmaker doesn't have television appearances and the usual media-oriented showcases at his disposal. As a result, the film has a muted quality, even though the former sharecropper, made it.

Muddy Waters is an odd fit for the music biopic treatment because the legendary musician, unfortunately, is not exactly a household name. Thank goodness Bo Diddley stayed relevant and did a Nike commercial with multi-sport athlete Bo Jackson, or else the rhythm and blues giant might have been lost to a generation prone to short memories.

"Cadillac Records" brings Chris Rock to mind when he was a regular on "Saturday Night Live". Rock wanted to do a bit on The Sylvers, a sort of poor man's Jackson 5, but was turned down by the producer because the disco group were a niche act.

In other words, a contemporary white audience forgot who the Sylvers were. Too black, even for late night. Profiling a relative obscurant such as Waters, and for that matter, Howlin' Wolf and Little Walter, makes "Cadillac Records" unique, because the film is profiling artists that are better known to the black community.

Learning about Little Walter is akin to a hypothetical film about Factory Records that spends an inordinate amount of time on A Certain Ratio. Chuck Berry(Mos Def) is Leonard Chess' Joy Division.

A legend such as Berry throws "Cadillac Records" out of balance because he overshadows the film's real subject, which is the independent record company Chess Records. Chuck Berry is the film's Ian Curtis.

He deserves his own "Control". Watching Berry in "Cadillac Records" recalls how Joy Division electrified Michael Winterbottom's "24-Hour Party People". Chess(Adrien Brody) makes for a weak protagonist because "Cadillac Records" doesn't make a strong case for his innocence, or guilt, when it came to paying his predominantly black roster.

The movie would rather pick on Brian Wilson(yes, "Surfin' U.S.A." sounds note-for-note, like Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen"), and unfairly, Elvis Presley(while Little Walter is being buried, we see Presley on the television) to infer that Chess wasn't paying his talent.