The Five Heartbeats

In the sixties five young men form a vocal group. They start with local contests, sign with a label, tour and produce hits. Then it all comes apart: drugs, contracts, jealousy, and the cost of being a Black group in a segregated country. Robert Townsend directs, wrote it with Keenen Ivory Wayans, and plays Duck. The group is invented and the source is not. Townsend and Wayans spent a long time talking to members of The Dells, The Temptations and similar acts, and much of the film, particularly the dealings with the label and the racist attacks on tour, comes directly out of those accounts. It failed commercially on release and drew mixed reviews. That reversed completely. The film became a fixture of Black American popular culture, played constantly on television, and its lines passed into everyday speech. The music carries it. The songs were written to the soul and doo-wop templates of the period, and the group's staging was taken from real acts. Who it is for: viewers interested in music drama and the history of Black American music. Who it is not for: the narrative is crowded and several of the five never develop, and the time jump in the final section is rushed.