New Release! Sorry to Bother You (2018) [No Spoilers]

Director: Boots Riley

A wild ride of social satire, and one of the most unique films I've seen in a while.

Sorry to Bother You follows Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) in Oakland set within a near-dystopian alternate version of our modern world. Cassius is a smart enough guy, but he's down on his luck and desperate for a job. Desperate enough to take a gig at a telemarketing agency and do cold calls to sell customers all sorts of useless products that they don't need. When Cassius, an African-American, is given the suggestion to "talk white," he adopts a stereotypical "nerdy" white guy voice (by David Cross), and his sales go through the roof. Before long, Cassius is offered the highly-coveted job as a "power caller" - a mysteriously powerful position granted only to the best of the best ground-level telemarketers. Though he has to break a picket line formed by his exploited co-workers, Cassius is initially elated at the immense salary increase. However, what he is selling gives him some serious pangs of conscience. Cassius climbs the corporate ladder, things become ever stranger and more terrifying.

The relatively simple summary above gives a reader no actual idea of what this movie does. Sorry to Bother You is a satire that punches you in the face with all sorts of criticisms about modern culture. Some of them are biting. Many of them are funny. And nearly every one of them is about as subtle as a set of brass knuckles to the teeth. But this is OK. The primary targets of writer/director Boots Riley deserve no quarter: rampant capitalism; creeping cultural homogeneity; commodification of the bodies and souls of everyone on the planet by the ultra-rich. These are what Riley is bringing our attention to, and it is quite a trip.

Cassius celebrates his massive successes as a "power caller."
Only later do his full realizations about his action hit him,
along with the horrors connected to them all.

While unlike nearly anything I've seen before, Sorry to Bother You does show clear elements of several other great satires and counter-culture films of cinema's past. The vision of consumerism run wild bring to mind John Carpenter's low-budget They Live. The commentary on both office culture and the dumbing down of mass populations is not unlike Mike Judge's Office Space and Idiocracy. But none of these can quite prepare you for just how gonzo things get in the third act of the movie. It threw me off for a moment, but it quickly becomes clear that Riley has a cogent point, although one that is using a really far-out story device.

The acting is great here. Lakeith Stanfield, whom I only know from the excellent TV show Atlanta plays a great protagonist. Cassius is, while intelligent, not the strongest-willed guy, and his journey of getting buffeted around by forces far stronger than him is portrayed with the right blend of confusion and humor. The supporting cast, from Tessa Thompson to Armie Hammer to a smaller role by A-lister and longtime Boots Riley family friend Danny Glover, all bring just the right tone to this uniquely strange picture.

You have to be in the right state of mind for this one. If you enjoy satire, then this one is well worth checking out. It's a form of cinema that isn't attempted much, but Riley gets it right.