Shadowboxer: Grade C

C

Shadowboxer (2005)

Cuba Gooding Jr. Helen Mirren. Directore Lee Daniels

Gooding and Mirren play assassins for hire in New York. They are also lovers, even though, or perhaps because, she shot his father when he was a boy. In one group assassination she spares the life of a pregnant woman. They kidnap her, take care of her, and raise the boy. The motivation for all this, from a couple of hard boiled killers is unclear, but they continue in the assassination game anyway. Mirren dies, Gooding becomes the (white) boy’s defacto father. Inevitably, the boy’s psychopathic bio father finds them and there is a showdown. It’s not much of a thriller, just a set of scenes. There didn’t seem to be anything at stake. The violence was hard to take at times (I don’t find any excuse for depicting torture), and the nudity and sexuality were lacking in aesthetics. It’s not a pretty picture to watch, a dark movie with murky character motivation and no particular message to deliver. Mirren and Gooding give performances worth seeing, and although I enjoyed the aggressively non-stereotypical casting, it might have been just too weird.