Written and Directed by Boots Riley

Starring Lakeith Stanfeld, Tessa Thompson, Danny Glover, Steven Yeun, Armie Hammer

It was a little more than halfway into Sorry to Bother You that I sat with fists clenched, heels dug deep as I leaned forward with an intense morbid fascination, desperately unaware of where the movie was taking me. What started as a middling comedy about the oppressed working class had slowly evolved into a dark commentary on society, slavery, capitalism, race, and finally ended as the strangest fucking thing I’ve seen all year. Its parallels to last year’s Get Out aren’t just readily available, they are downright creepy. That LaKeith Stanfield is in both already tells you enough, and both movies are about a man trapped in a place he knows he doesn’t belong, and so much more.

The story is about Cassius Green (Cash is green, played by Stanfield), a guy just trying to succeed in Oakland. The opening scene shows him in a trying job interview for a telemarketing company. Just how the movie handles this is more clever than you might think. Cassius lives in the garage of his uncle’s place with his girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson). He’s four months behind on rent, walks with an awkward slouch like his clothes weigh 100 pounds, and drives the world’s shittiest car. This job will be the one to save him.

S.T.T.S his boss keeps telling him once he’s hired. Stick To The Script when calling people. Cassius fails miserably at making sales. “Sorry to bother you” is how he starts off every call, what knowable disaster. Danny Glover plays an old man who we see is a veteran telemarketer, an offers the wise advice to Cassius of,  “use your white voice”. That line alone might be where every other movie would have ended that conversation, but listen to Glover’s explanation of why. Listen to Cassius ask him about white voice, it goes so much deeper than I imagined a movie like this would go. The subtlety of this convo is remarkable, I knew at this point the movie would have something greater still to say.

Cassius obliges. It works like a charm. He starts making sales at an alarming rate, and this is where the movie warps from its basic comedy into abstract realism on crack. Because Cassius starts falling into the homes of the people he’s calling. Yes you read that right, he actually appears as though he is in the room with him, though he is only on the phone. This slight stylistic shift is something I saw in American Animals a few weeks ago, but that movie failed to utilize it frequently enough to remain consistent. Sorry to Bother You does not make that same mistake. The style of the film is ever present, and I love how we see this sort of impossible editing and teleporting of characters through transitions, sounds, music, and dialogue. We know right away we are in for something different. There’s a Monty Python reference there that I’m not funny enough to make.

Cassius becomes so good at his job that his boss informs him he’ll soon be a Power Caller, one of those big guys on the higher up floor. We see those higher ups boarding a lavish and mysterious elevator that no one else is allowed on. “They’ve been telling me that for years”, Glover tells him. Cassius becomes frustrated that he isn’t making more money. Another co-worker of his Squeeze (Steven Yeun) proposes at the coffee machines that they unionize to challenge their pay.

A strike happens. And while his friends boycott the company, Cassius (in a stark turn of events) gets promoted. He becomes a Power Caller and ascends to that higher level where he learns that the sales are no longer encyclopedias, but now weapons for governments, and also slave labor. “White voices only” up here, he learns. He meets the guy with the eye patch who we have seen ushering people into that elevator in earlier scenes. He is also black. Cassius calls him something which is bleeped out (the word and the mouth as it is said) and eye patch guy replies, “Don’t call me ___, call me ___”. The first word I can only guess is “nigga”, as the bond between two African Americans in a workplace like that can’t exist in that way. It is no coincidence that all the major roles of the people who star and who we root for in this film are people of color or women, and that all the symbolically villainous heads of the ruling class are white people. Cassius’ three bosses are all white. And their boss is Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) who I will get to.

Cassius’s girlfriend Detroit is an artist, who also is struggling. She also ends up working alongside Cassius’ as a telemarketer, and can’t stand to see what he’s become once he’s a Power Caller. A richer, out of touch version of the guy she loved. And even though it affords them better luxuries it has cost him his friendships. Detroit wears the craziest earrings and has a truly bizare art exhibit sequence where she says weird quotes while she allows people to pelt her with phones and balloons filled with paint I think. Some experimental film expert will have to translate these moments in the movie because I didn’t much get it. It also goes on for a while. Something about Africa and oppression, and maybe social media. Let me know what the hell this is.

It’s interesting, to see these juxtapositions of Cassius, a former working class man, now an upper class elite walking to work in front of his friends who are still boycotting their wages. It’s more interesting to see Cassius’ friend Salvador (Jermaine Fowler) confront him on his betrayal. “My success has nothing to do with you” Cassius explains. Much is grieved over in the Black community of when one of their own becomes successful and doesn’t return to help the places he has grown up in. They are often perceived as traitors, whether or not they have achieved prosperity on their own or had help from those around them. Glover shakes his head in the background, regretting he ever helped him out in the first place. There’s a lot more going on in this scene than the two of them sarcastically wishing the other to have a good day, month, year. Maybe Cassius walks with a slouch because he has no spine.

And that is about all I am going to speak on regarding story. Where it takes you is something you will just have to experience yourself. It’ll be the minutes following the Jade Door, and all I will tell you is even our audience, who obnoxiously talked and laughed at all the wrong moments during this movie, all graciously shut the fuck up in awestruck horror at its arrival. The passage of time in this house, and specifically the scene between Cassius and Steve Lift, may be the most brilliant in all of 2018. The movie’s flawed lingering on some of its weaker elements up to this point are muted at its revelation. It is batshit psychopathic insanity. And it’s fucking amazing.

There is so much to talk about with Sorry to Bother You. Some of the movie’s timing doesn’t quite work, and it has some elements that are wack even for what it has established. But it peaks with absolute greatness, and has some terrifying truths to expose us to. Maybe there’s too much in here, about consumerism, and classes, and race relations, slavery and social media, and the cyclical nature of things. And sometimes how when you fight the system you end up making it stronger. And sometimes you end up back where you started. But maybe we also need a movie with too much. Maybe then we will start to pay attention.

I think that image of Lakeith with a bloody bandage on his head will become iconic, just as Daniel Kaluuya’s crying face as he’s entering the sunken place will never leave our minds. Cassius goes through the entire workplace spectrum: starting as a working class grunt, ascending to the upper ruling class, and finally ending as the leader of a revolution. Pay close attention to the scene where he raps, it’s way more telling than you will first think it is. And the reveal involving the eyepatch guy is so quiet and so smart. Even if you saw it coming it’s honestly mindblowing how restrained and patient the movie is with it.

Sorry to Bother you was written and directed by Boots Riley in his debut. And what a fucking first movie to have. What an ambitious look at life from a guy who had previously only composed music for films in the past. There’s no way this movie was greenlit, it doesn’t seem possible to me.

The movie is filled with religious imagery, and music evoking some sort of divine presence. Even some of the scenes are shot with this ethereal glow, and move at times like a soft spoken dream. Cassius looks up a lot, like at his uncle, and at the elevator and the floor is takes you too. He talks about how pointless everything he does is. And he sometimes pauses in observation with his hand on his chin, similar to Takashi Shimura rubbing his head in times of puzzlement in Seven Samurai.

The final shot of the film is perfect. And then what happens after will come as a nice surprise to you. Infinity War is still the best movie of 2018, but Sorry to Bother You may just win the best scene. It will also facilitate endless discussions and theories, which I’m loving that movies are able to do this again. It’s one of the best rides I’ve had all year.