Review of Street Smart (1987) by Katherine B — 14 Mar 2009

The studio's payment to Christopher Reeve for agreeing to make SUPERMAN IV for them, and a breakthrough role for Morgan Freeman, this offbeat little drama has aged well, partly because of its prescient theme of media manipulation, and partly because the ending (which I can understand some people hating and writing off as a too-convenient Hollywood ending) is actually incredibly cynical when you stop and think about it.

Christopher Reeve plays a young, married, ambitious magazine reporter who, desperate to please his boss, invents an interview with a pimp for a story about life on the street. At the same time, his life intersects with Morgan Freeman's character, a pimp named Fast Black who's under investigation for a murder charge.

The D.A suspects that Reeve's fictional pimp, 'tyrone' is the same person as Fast Black, and wants access to his notes and interview tapes as evidence, which of course don't exist, and things grow more complicated from there, as Reeve's character struggles to extricate himself from his lie and protect his career while getting pulled deeper into Fast Black's world.

Reeve is effective in a very non-superheroic role, and Kathy Baker is good in a supporting role, but Freeman really does steal the show here, taking what could have been a stock heavy and making him electric-by turns charming and menacing, but always seemingly the smartest man in the room.

His situation is just as desperate as Reeve's, and while the third act does seem a bit overly melodramatic at first, there are some interesting reflections on race, class and how much the truth matters that come out of the final scenes.