Talk to Me

In sixties Washington, Petey Greene comes out of prison and turns up at a radio station demanding a show. The programme director, Dewey Hughes, does not take him seriously. When he finally reaches a microphone, Greene turns out to be the only person who knows what to say: he talks about what nobody discusses, plainly and profanely. On the night Martin Luther King is killed, with the city burning, he is the one who stays on air. The film is not interested in a radio career. It is interested in two men using each other: Dewey wants to rise inside an institution, Greene despises institutions, and each wants what the other has. The friendship is built on that bargain. The form is period production: the studio, the street, sixties Washington and riot scenes blended with archive footage. Kasi Lemmons directed. The story is true: Petey Greene did come out of prison to become one of Washington's best-known broadcasters, and Dewey Hughes managed him. The film does not hide the falling-out between them at the end. Don Cheadle plays Greene and Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Dewey. Cheadle's broadcast scenes are the strongest thing in it. Who it is for: viewers who like portraits drawn from life and films about sixties America. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a well-shaped biography. The film scatters in its second half and hurries through Greene's last years.