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Picture
A talented but arrogant jazz trumpeter romances two
​women as his manager gets in deep with gambling debts.
DRAMA

Mo' Better Blues (1990)

Written and Directed by Spike Lee

Starring Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Wesley Snipes, Joie Lee, Cynda Williams, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, Robin Harris,
​John Turturro, Nicholas Turturro, Rubén Blades

Connor Eyzaguirre
June 3, 2020
7/10
Mo' Better Blues is a decent watch, and features a fantastic lead performance from Denzel Washington, but it lacks focus. There's no real point to the film beyond "let your kids play outside." In the 90's, Spike Lee became known for his politically charged, culturally relevant films, but this one is missing all of that. It's still got Spike's style, just without the substance behind it. If you can get past that, the film isn't bad, but getting past that is difficult, or at least it was for me.

Denzel plays jazz trumpeter Bleek Gilliam, who leads a quintet in a popular nightclub. Bleek is talented but he's kind of a dick, believing that he's the most skilled musician. The band only ever plays his music, and he constantly clashes with saxophonist Shadow Henderson (Snipes), who wants to be his own thing. All the while, Bleek is sleeping with two girls who aren't aware of each other, and his manager Giant (Lee) has a serious gambling problem. None of these stories mesh particularly well, and the ending feels very rushed and tacked on, like an afterthought. Lee cranked this one out in between Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever, both of which are super-charged with cultural identity and societal importance. This one fails to live up to his 90's run.

Like a lot of Lee's films, the characters are pretty insufferable. Most of them are arrogant and unlikable, particularly Bleek. Denzel does a great job, but the character is pretty one-dimensional. He's a great trumpeter and he's arrogant, and that's it. The star of this film is the flawless jazz soundtrack, but if you're looking for Lee's masterworks, this is not one of them.

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