She Hate Me Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)July 30th, 2004
SHE HATE ME
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Sony Pictures Classics
Grade: A-
Directed by: Spike Lee
Written by: Spike Lee, Michael Genet
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington, Dania Ramirez, Ellen Barkin, Monica Bellucci, Jim Brown, Sarita Choudhury, Ossie Davis, Brian Dennehy, Woody Harrelson, Bai Ling, Lonette McKee, Paula Jai Parker, Dania Ramirez, Q-Tip, JohnTurturro Screened at: Review, NYC, 7/6/04
In Spike Lee's most mature work to date, the celebrated director takes aim at our currently debased corporate culture, comparing (by implication) the Enron debacle, Martha Stewart's greed, the WorldCom scandal among other iniquities with an unusual category of prostitution. Though the metaphor–here given specific, graphic life–is far from original, Lee documents his take on the evils of big business with graphic scenes and a good deal of humor, in a couple of instances reviving the Watergate break-in, one of the most corrupt antics of Big Government in the last century.
With a script that Spike Lee wrote together with Michael Genet we are thrown into the fortieth-floor Wall Street office of a major pharmaceutical firm, a company which has regularly inflated its balance sheets and which allows the higher-ups to bail out of their stock holdings while shafting the 401(k) plans of regular employees when the corporation's anti-AIDS vaccine is rejected by the Food and Drug Administration.
In a stunning performance, Anthony Mackie ("8 Mile," "Hollywood Homicide") takes on the role of John Henry "Jack" Armstrong, a vice president of the firm who, together with Margo Chadwick (Ellen Barkin) reports to CEO Leland Powell (Woody Harrelson). When Armstrong, furious about the freezing of his funds, blows the whistle on the scandal, he is fired and blacklisted. Unable to find employment in his field, he is persuaded by his ex-girlfriend, Fatima Goodrich (Kerry Washington) to become a one-man, direct sperm back for lesbians who want to have babies of their own but for one reason or another have been unable or unwilling to adopt or to take their chances with fertility clinics. Since Armstrong is intelligent, strong, and virile (the last attribute helped by his gulping regular doses of a herbal Viagra called Horny Goat Weed), he soon finds small armies of women lining up outside his Manhattan digs. Lee milks humor from his wide assortment of baby-seeking lesbians, who range from the big-sexual Fatima, whose emotional attachment to Armstrong is threatening to her female lover; the seductive Asian-American Oni (Bai Ling), who is gentle and undemanding; and an assortment of aggressive, insistent women who demonstrate to Jack–and by extension to us in the audience–what it feels like to be a sexual object. Lee utilizes animation to show sperm cells racing toward their targets.
The moral questions posed by the picture would keep NYTimes ethicist Randy Cohen occupied for well over a month. To what extent is a man responsible for taking care of his offspring even if his kids are in the sole custody of their mothers? What can be done to protect whistle-blowers who are threatened with blacklisting? To what extent should pharmaceutical companies–and by extension corporations in other fields of endeavor–make their life-saving products available to millions who cannot afford them? In the broadest sense, what is the meaning of family?
Mr. Lee has come a way since his black-and-white, breakthrough film, "She's Gotta Have It," which shares a theme with the current pic by focusing on a sexy, independent black woman and the three "macho" men who compete for her undivided attention. Instead of the choppy acting and charming, albeit banal, use of a sequence filmed in color, this time Lee parades a group of talented, well-known performers before us, people in roles as diverse as Jim Brown as Jack's diabetic father, whose relationship with his wife is argumentative but loving; Woody Harrelson as the conniving, money-grubbing CEO; Monica Bellucci as the tantalizing Italian-American who uses Jack to make her dad a grandfather; and John Turturro as Don Angelo Bonasera, a self-deprecating mafia "dinosaur," the last of his breed, who is surprisingly accepting of his daughter's one-night stand with John Henry Armstrong.
Rated R. 140 minutes. ©) 2004 by Harvey Karten
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