Mickey Hardaway (2024)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on July 24, 2024 @ tonymacklin.net.

Mickey Hardaway is a challenging indie. It's a fatalistic odyssey.

Talent should be able to transcend environment - bitter, brutalizing experience. Love should be able to conquer all. But such truisms do not always withstand the power of environment and character.

In Mickey Hardaway, talent and love are not enough.

The title character's surname hard/way is symbolic.

Mickey (Rashad Hunter) grows up with the dream of being a cartoonist, possibly an animator, but he faces brutal obstacles that cause him to trust no one else and to depend totally on his own "values."

His brutalizing father (David Chattam) says, "You think I'm killing your dreams. You're damn right I am." His creativity, booze, and his art are his only refuges.

Into Mickey's withdrawn life comes young female Grace (Ashley Parchment). She gives him remarkable support, but he is unable or unwilling to fully accept them. "I don't know how to love," he tells her. At crucial times, he rejects Grace.

But she does break through when she recommends Mickey go to a therapist (Stephen Cofield), who helped her mother when her husband was killed.

Mickey doesn't comply with any one else's rules. When the therapist says their time is up, Mickey refuses to accept that.

And he refuses to help a media boss (Samuel Whitehill) who offers him collaboration in a project. Mickey says he only wants to do his popular comic strip which the man has published in his newspaper. Maybe he can't trust the boss, but Mickey doesn't go outside of himself. They become enemies. [The boss is the only major Caucasian character in the film.]

Director/screenwriter Marcellus Cox - with cinematographer Jamil Gooding - creates a Noirish feeling, especially with his smart use of light, through blinds, and across faces. Mickey Hardaway is a walk in the dark at night with shards of light.

One questionable technique, which is almost a cliche, is when Mickey and Grace fall in love, the film springs into color. Is Mickey the wizard of Oz (the prison)? And the use of introducing color doesn't have the potency of Pleasantville (1998).

The screenplay by Cox is articulate with such words as "manifest" and "fruition." He basically keeps the characters human and gives them good lines, e.g. the cop in the jail talking to Mickey.

The film is well cast, especially Ashley Parchment who is appealingly natural as Grace. And David Chattam is very convincing as the mean, noxious father.

The resolution of Mickey Hardaway is jarring. It may lose some viewers.

But the vision is powerful and shattering.

It's a punch in the gut.