Sorry to Bother You is a strange movie that didn’t make as much noise as it should have when it was released back in 2018. This capitalist satire, directed by rapper Boots Riley, says a lot about where our world is going, while also doing it in the most surrealist, fun, scary, and confident ways. Here’s why you should watch the film:
Capitalism Evilness in a Unique Way
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Sorry to Bother You is about Cassius “Cash” Green, the name pronounced “cash is green”, (LaKeith Stanfield), a Black man who only wants some money to get by, as he’s broke. Green gets a new job as a telemarketer, and when he isn’t succeeding, an older Black colleague (Danny Glover) tells him to use his white voice. Cassius follows his advice, and his white voice (David Cross) makes him a star in the company, and a “power caller”. Everything looks to be going great for him and his girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson), but what he’s selling is really something to worry about: a company that hires workers for life, houses them, and feeds them, so they can work without any other concerns (what could be seen as slaves).
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This film is a scary dystopia. It’s also one of the best movies about capitalism, period. As the best satires always do, it cranks some of the things happening in our world to 11, showing us how we’re not that far off, and what the extreme obsession with money has done to our society in a unique, fun way.
Director Boots Riley’s best decision is showing all these ideas in the most surreal, surprising way, making it an incredibly fun ride, mixing many genres, and creating a movie that’s at the same time, weird, funny, and a little bit unsettling. It all climaxes when Cash goes upstairs as a “power caller”, and gets mixed up with the people in power in the company. The man in charge, Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) doesn’t even see their workers as humans, just as the money they can get for the company; a clear message about exploitation and profit that more people are facing each day.
Boots Riley: One of a Kind Director
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Boots Riley was first known as a rapper in the political hip-hop group The Coup, and this was his first movie, directed when he was already 45 years old. Like many of the old-school directors of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, being a director isn’t something he had been doing his whole life, and all his other experiences made him have a unique point of view. All this helped Sorry to Bother You become the strange, weird, fantastic animal that it is.
Riley uses magic realism to express his ideas, getting inspired by both Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, but also with Michel Gondry. The French’s influences are fairly obvious when Cassius talks to a client, as he drops from his cubicle to the client’s house, and also when he’s getting rich; as he stays in bed with Detroit, everything around them changes, and they’ve become a loft owner, with silk sheets on their bed. It’s visually stimulating, while also showing spectacularly how money can change your life.
One of Riley’s greatest strengths is that he doesn’t use the classical three-act structure, so you never know where the movie is going next, and that’s an exhilarating sensation. He knows the only way to “eat our medicine” and watch some anti-capitalist message and confrontational work is by entertaining us, and he hits it out of the park. That’s one of the many reasons why he should direct an MCU movie. About the idea of a “white voice” director Boots Riley told The Guardian: “You’d try to obscure the fact that you’re black, just on the very basic level of trying to make someone feel like you’re like them, and on the more racist level of someone being OK giving you their credit card information.”
Great Cast
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All these crazy ideas the movie has wouldn’t work without an incredible cast, who not only sell the hell out of the film, but also can work through the different mix of the genres that Sorry to Bother You lives in. That’s why casting was so important. Riley and his team nailed it, as most actors did some of their best work on this film. LaKeith Stanfield plays Cash with the right balance of disillusion at first, bravado when things are going well, and “are you kidding me?” panic and confusion when things start unraveling. It’s one of his best performances, as he makes us care for him, even if everything around his character gets crazier and crazier.
The same can be said of his girlfriend Detroit, and actor Tessa Thompson. Detroit isn’t a realized character, and some even objected to the fact that she’s only there as a soundboard for Cash, but Thompson gives a lived-in performance, one of her best, showing with every gesture, every word, and every interaction, what’s going inside this woman’s head. The character also needs to rig the system using a “white voice”, so she can sell her art, and Thompson commits to the bit impressively, even when she discovers her white voice is British (and is being played by Lily James). Many great actors appear in the film in small roles, or just voicing roles, from David Cross to Patton Oswalt, Danny Glover to Omari Hardwick, Terry Crews to Kate Berlant, and Rosario Dawson to Forest Whitaker, but the other character and performance who deserves our attention is Steven Yeun.
Yeun plays Squeeze, a colleague of Cash who is trying to unionize the whole team of telemarketers, and his performance is great. He’s as charismatic and unique as Stanfield, but in a more worried position than him, someone who hasn’t been seduced by the capitalism and money around him, being the counterpoint to everything that has been happening to our lead character. Not many actors could do all that with a mostly reactive small role, but Yeun, in one of his first appearances after he left The Walking Dead, shows something of the uniqueness that has made him a star in the making and an Oscar-nominated actor.
About being part of the film, LaKeith Stanfield told IndieWire: “I didn’t quite understand it the first read. I had to read it again. Because the format is different than anything I’d read before. So I had to really familiarize myself with it and dig in just so I could understand it. And once I understood it, I was like, Oh yes, I definitely had to be a part of it.”
