The countrified Houston ghetto that springs to life in “Jason’s Lyric” is a setting not often illuminated on the big screen. The characters who live within that world are another story.
Jason (Allen Payne) is the older brother-the Good Brother-the moderately thoughtful young man who wants to escape his surroundings but is held back by feelings of responsibility toward his younger brother-the Bad Brother-Josh (Bokeem Woodbine), and his mother, the Good Struggling Single Mother (Suzzanne Douglas).
Jason’s inspiration-his “lyric”-is a young woman named, yes, Lyric, one of those up-and-coming cliches: the earthy African-American female whose mind is filled with poetry a la Janet Jackson as Justice in “Poetic Justice.” Goodness knows, Jason needs a Lyric; on his own he’s pretty much a monotonous instrumental.
First-time director Doug McHenry and writer Bobby Smith Jr. can’t decide whether they want to tell a family saga, an inner-city cautionary crime tale or a sultry love story, so they opt for them all. They’re not following any delicately balanced recipe here; rather, it’s as if they merely decided to combine ingredients that had proved popular elsewhere.
The best scenes are the very early ones, in which Jason recalls a childhood in which his father, Maddog (Forest Whitaker), brings him and his brother to the fields to bask in the rain of a crop-duster. But when the father returns home from Vietnam having lost a leg and gained a drinking problem and bitter depression, the troubles begin.
Whitaker, with his droopy eyes and imposing yet soft presence, almost always manages to bring an engaging complexity to his characters, and he balances the warmth and instability as best as he can as the Broken-Down Vietnam Vet. But such a character is destined to become the Absent Father, and Maddog’s violent exit provides the basis for Jason’s nightmares, which punctuate the movie like the chimes of a church clock. As Jason so perceptively observes as a young adult, “Memories won’t let you forget.”
Jason keeps recalling Maddog’s being felled by a gun shot, fired presumably by one of the two brothers, as he drunkenly attacks the boys’ mother. The flashbacks don’t show who fired the shot-which is a bit dishonest since they depict Jason’s point of view and he certainly knows-but the answer isn’t hard to guess.
As Jason toils in a television repair shop, Josh is being released from prison-not for the first time. Josh comes across as a lost cause from the moment, as a little boy, that he starts flaring his nostrils and furrowing his brow at his father; his post-prison behavior-getting drunk repeatedly, making a beeline for the city’s riff-raff and hitching onto violent crime’s fast track-does nothing to alter that impression.
Throughout, Josh acts a little crazy, yet bigger-time criminals still manage to trust him, and Jason can only offer lame get-a-job lectures. Forget about character shading; ultimately Josh is just a vehicle for revisiting familiar crime scenes and an obstacle for Jason to knock down in the name of love.
The love story just pops out of nowhere, with Lyric appearing in Jason’s store and him pursuing her flamboyantly as only people in the movies do. The sex scenes reportedly had to be cut down to keep the movie from being rated NC-17; what remains is your basic, fairly explicit slow-music-medley lovemaking in an idyllic bayou.
The romance doesn’t convince, if only because Jason is such a zero in the personality department. Lyric’s girlfriend-a busty bimbo who quotes John Donne-tells her to grab a rarity like Jason, but it’s an insult to black men to imply that Jason represents the best there is to offer if you live in the poor part of town. Sure, he’s “quiet in a world full of thunder,” but so is a bush, and they have about equal amounts of charisma.
Jason, as written, is mostly a compendium of his circumstances, and Payne brings little more to the party. Sparks don’t fly from the sleepy-eyed Lyric (Jada Pinkett) either. The movie’s most fleshed-out performance comes from Douglas as the mother faced with letting go of her sons.
“Jason’s Lyric” is, if nothing else, nicely filmed; McHenry is a smooth director who demonstrates he could tell a story better than this one, and he provides a vivid sense of place in showing a Houston that maintains its down-home sensibility as skyscrapers loom in the background.
Naturally, the movie can’t end without some senseless bloodletting to tie together the discordant brother’s-keeper and gotta-keep-her plots. But the shrill ugliness of the resolution reveals little except a warped moral. If violence doesn’t solve everything, it shouldn’t hold the key to true love.
”JASON’S LYRIC”
(STAR) 1/2
Directed by Doug McHenry; written by Bobby Smith Jr.; photographed by Francis Kenny; edited by Andrew Mondshein; production designed by Simon Dobbin; music by Afrika and Matt Noble; produced by Doug McHenry and George Jackson. A Gramercy Pictures release; opens Wednesday at Burnham Plaza, Chestnut Station, Webster Place and outlying theaters. Running time: 1:59. MPAA rating: R. Language, violence, nudity, sex.
THE CAST
Jason Alexander…………………………….Allen Payne
Lyric Greer……………………………….Jada Pinkett
Maddog…………………………………Forest Whitaker
Joshua Alexander………………………..Bokeem Woodbine
Gloria Alexander……………………….Suzzanne Douglas
