Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

The films written, directed (and usually edited) by John Sayles resemble those directed by the late, great Robert Altman in unevenness and in usually having many characters played by actors eager to work with the director. I think that Sayles's 2007 "Honeydripper" may be his most conventional story. It takes more than two hours for all the predictable resolutions to occur. (Sayles is by no means the only writer-director(-actor) whom I think needs to employ an editor with authority!).

Not that a lot of movies are set in rural Alabama ca. 1950 (or, indeed any time). Although "Honeydripper" breaks no new ground, it provided a great opportunity for Danny Glover to shine (which to me is sufficient a raison d'être for the movie) and provides good opportunities for other black actors (and two white ones who have largely faded from view, Stacy Keach and Mary Steenburgen, though she had a bigger and better role in Sayles's "Casa de los Babys").

Glover plays Tyrone "Pine Top" Purvis, a honky-tonk pianist whose tavern outside Harmony, Alabama, the Honeydripper, is running up debts rather than profits. There is no audience for the aged but still more-than competent blues singer (Mable John), cheered on mostly by her companion (a fervent (Vondie Curtis-Hall). "Pine Top" hopes to save his establishment with a special appearance the upcoming October Saturday night by New Orleans "recording artist" "Guitar Sam."

To make this last chance a success, Tyrone takes some desperate measures. When "Guitar Sam" fails to show up, these include making the sheriff (Keach) a partner in the Honeydripper in order to get a young army veteran would-be performer to pretend to be "Guitar Sam." This tall, shy, and innocent young man, who is called "Sonny," picked up for vagrancy and forced to pick cotton, is played by Gary Clark Jr.

Like every young man (and the sheriff), Sonny is smitten by "China Doll" (model Yaya DaCosta, who is not "high yeller" BTW), the daughter of Tyrone's wife Delilah (Lisa Gay Hamilton). She is going to go to beauty school and does Sonny's hair. Though kept on a short lease, her charms are used by Tyrone (who married Delilah when "China Doll" was two)

Delilah, currently "between churches," is sorely tempted to be saved by a revivalist holding forth near Harmony, and has reason to be infuriated by what Tyrone does to promote the "Guitar Sam" appearance.

There is also a blind guitar-picker (Keb' Mo') who has known Tyrone forever, and seemingly witnessed what haunts "Pine Top," Charles S. Dutton as Tyrone's aide-de-camp at the Honeydripper, and a pair of cotton pickers named Dex (Sean Patrick Thomas, The Fountain) and Junebug (Kel Mitchell) who despise each other.

I hoped that nothing bad was going to happen to these characters. The movie traffics in clichés of determination and really only ignites when Sonny gets on stage pretending to be "Guitar Sam." Clark definitely can play electric guitar and the South of the early 1950s is where rock'n'roll is abornin'.

Mike Leigh's recurrent cinematographer Dick Pope (who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on "The Illusionist") provides honeyed (not really sepia, but there is a throwback feel) images of rural Alabama, ca. 1950.

The DVD includes a commentary track from Sayles that I have not played, a trailer, and interviews with Sayles, Glover, Dutton, and producer Maggie Renzi. Sayles discusses the multiple roots of rock'n'roll (BTW, he also wrote some of the songs).

So, the movie was relatively slow and very predictable, but served up three kinds of music (blues, black gospel choir, embryonic Chuck Berry), a great performance by Glover (as a proud entrepreneur hating what he has to do to try to stay in business) along with outstanding ones by Hamilton, Keach, DaCosta, and Clark. The movie shows a changing time and frustrations of rural blacks living under the oppression of a coercive legal structure used to extract labor and money by "law enforcement" officials (with badges or robes).

Though showcasing a great ensemble cast, I would make no claim that "Honeydripper" is a great movie. 3.5 stars might be a strain for those who are not Danny Glover fans.

Corruption is Sayles's recurrent theme, but other Sayles films such as "Eight Men Out," "City of Hope," and "Lone Star" (my three favorites) are more dramatic and less predictable. His previous one, the sprawling satire "Silver City" is funnier.

@2008, Stephen O. Murray

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD