They Killed Tyrone : How it Happens is the Point.

There is a tendency today to watch movies through almost a purely political/moralistic lens. To judge a movie not based on its storytelling merits and attributes, but on the lessons it provides, the strength of them, and subsequently their morality, but messages are a consequence of stories, not the point of them. The power of stories is never primarily concerned with messaging, it's concerned with how they are transported. Newcomer Juel Taylor’s fun but poignant Sci Fi flick “They Cloned Tyrone” is such a story, and it's a great story. Two things define Taylors film; experience and perception. More specific to the movie, the Black experience in a racist patriarchal capitalist state and as a result of, our perception of ourselves and of our realities all of which have at the very least two ways of being seen, but this is not new to nay of us. The power is in the inventiveness, the creativity of the visuals, in the way we receive these messages, and that the audience is treated to this in the same way that the characters in the movie are, realizing our perception of things is off in real time along with the characters in the movie. Experiencing the terrors and the joys right along with them.

We are initially introduced to the small urban area of “Glen” and all its colorful denizens and various pit stops where these citizens engage in commerce or fellowship, legal and illegal activities, and work. It is presented as a reality, until it is not, but even as it's being presented as reality there are signs that something is off. Sometimes it's the silly titles to the names of businesses like the liquor store called “Got Dranks”. Sometimes it's in the performance of a character like John Boyega’s “Fontaine”, who carries in his performance a certain sadness that alludes to something not quite being right, something beyond what we are seeing. Sometimes it's in things exterior from the context of what's happening inside the film like the production design whether it be the cinematography which is eerie and all together real and unreal at the same time, or the clothing which is both lavish and gawdy. As we begin, Fontaine is looking for a drug dealer who appears to be selling on his turf. He pays a young boy to find this person, hunts him down and runs him over with his car. His various hustles for the day not finished, he then pays a sex worker to find a pimp named “Slick Charles” (A riotous Jamie Foxx) who owes him money, where we first meet Teyonah Parrish’s delightful “Yo-Yo” a sex worker with ambitions to be more, but his reality and ours is interrupted when he is suddenly shot by the very same drug dealer whom he had run over earlier that day. Things from here begin to take on double meaning and serve double purposes as well as perceptions.

The local liquor store is no longer just a pit stop for those who work (and those who don't) to commiserate and share the day's gossip, it is also one of a few strategically selected destinations where the cities inhabitants are being made compliant by way of imbibing (the liquor store), eating, (local fast food chicken chain) or congregating in worship (The church). The homeless man who sits out in front of the liquor store is not what he seems either. The semi slurred incoherent sentences that charismatically slide from off his tongue are revealed to be actual clues as to what's going on, as the movie insinuates, this is a Nancy Drew mystery by way of the hood. About a quarter of the way through the movie as Fontaine is starting to unravel the threads of this conspiracy, the old man gives them a clue as to where to go next. “The big man will point the way everytime" he says, referring to God, this too has double meaning; there is the spiritual sense wherein for those who believe in God recognize he acts as a compass many times providing answers that they need for a life that has been trouble some and burdensome and filled with terror since we arrived in this American experiment, but also it has a more literal connotation pertaining to a picture of Jesus inside the local church where his hand points directly to the secret entry way to the underground lab beneath their town. This is a consistent and constant theme within the film, whether it's in word like, “the trap” as an actual trap, or from one context to another like when Yo-Yo and Slick Charles make fun of Fontaine's predicament telling him he is both dead and not, here and not here.

The centerpiece of the film comes pretty much midway in the film when we are introduced to one of the major operatives behind this experiment, and the conspiracy that authorizes it, (which is also meant to be a stand-in for the American experience) recalling such films as “Undercover Brother”, “Get Out”, and “Black Dynamite”. In a wonderfully spirited performance, Kiefer Sutherland’s nameless character gives the characters a choice (which is really an ultimatum) die or run with the game, even as they know the score. When Sutherland is threatened by Yo-Yo he immediately shouts a word that instantly sends Fontaine into a trance where his body and mind now belong to Sutherland and he is force to act out anything that's Sutherland commands him to do. This is the most terrifying this movie gets. It is an evocation of the horror of possession, and invites parallels to Dracula, and zombification, in movies like “Sugar Hill” (1974) and in the case of possession “JD’s Revenge” (1976). It is through the visceral nature of watching Fontaine and Slick Charles eyes as they are commanded to either murder a friend or stand by and watch, each powerless to help his friend - that we the audience are transported to similar feelings and experiences of our own under the state. This is not real, and it is just distant enough and wild enough that it isn't traumatic or overbearing, but it simulates the experience well. Thing is though, they do have an actual choice and the recognition of this in the film begins the revolution. The pathos and poignancy of this film lies in this particular section when Fontaine grieving what he feels is a preordained life, resigns himself to his fate. Just after the big reveal of the entire operation Yo-Yo comes back to Fontaine’s place to galvanize him for a fight, but Fontaine wants no parts of it. Yo-Yo says “This sh** is bigger than you, it's bigger than me, it's your f***in home”. Fontaine's response is egregiously despondent, “Who gives a f***, this ain't no f***in community, it's just a bunch of broke-ass niggas with nowhere else to go”. Yo-Yo’s physical/hierarchal position vs her political position within this movie despite experiencing the exact same woes and some more-so than her male counterparts is a whole nother piece, but I digress. The key to this scene is that Fontaine's experience and his revelatory peek into his reality has in this moment dictated his perception of himself. His predicament is out of his control, so in his mind he might as well play it out and play it out he does, day in and day out. Again while the event /experience that causes this melancholia -as -living is outlandish, the actions themselves are the sad state of not only his reality but many of our own.

Fontaine wallows in his sadness, until he runs into the same child who at the beginning scouted out the drug dealer for him. Despite the fact that the child acts more grown than he is out of survival instinct, Fontaine sees in him innocence, and is reminded of his past and subsequently of a future. He is reminded that even with all that he knows and even with all that's going on, all the terror, all the violence, all the cruelty, that there are still joys to be found and that even though his humanity has literally been stolen from him, he is human nonetheless and that he deserves to live, not just survive. It is interesting then that the final boss of this particular film (it seems pretty clear they're setting up for the possibility of a sequel) is the original version of himself. It says that in order to move forward Fontaine is going to have to kill the version of himself that sees no hope, that is resigned to his fate and acts thusly. To expel the part of him that having experienced the pain, having experienced the trauma, having experienced the feeling of inevitable failure, had decided it's better to reign in hell than to serve in it and that “assimilation is better than annihilation”, rather than it's better to do away with hell all together.

Watching this film or any film to receive a poignant message is not wrong in and of itself, its simply misguided . Not only does it misunderstand where the power of stories resides, but its a reckless and immature understanding of the film industries position within the same capitalist/racist/patriarchal state, and the precarious position it places them in as moral vehicles. They Cloned Tyrone is not a great movie because it tells the right or wrong message, (it is of course arguable whether that message is terrible, banal, or great) it's a great movie because it invites us to consider our experience through a number of inventive, thoughtful, devices and images, through a contextual historical understanding of the genres it employs to do so, and through it's ability to make us laugh, cry, or become angry through it all, cloning just just Tyrone but the communal experience of living here in this country in this time, and more specifically in the various hoods of America.