American Hip-Hop artiste Boots Riley's debut feature film, “Sorry to bother you!” is the de rigueur opening line for a telemarketer, before he/she might or might not have the chance to heap on their stick-to-the-script coaxing patter. The movie starts when our young hero Cassius Green (Stanfield, a multi-faceted leading man in the making) is applying for a telemarketing post in the RegalView Company in the present Oakland.
Although the telemarketing business Riley presents is nothing but the usual business, teemed with profit-seeking brainwash and phony blarney, yet, enlightened by an elderly co-worker Langston (Glover), Cassius finds a knack of mimicking a “white voice” (voiced by an oleaginous David Gross) to excel in his trade, and before soon he is elected to join the exclusive echelon of “power caller”, situated on a luxurious suite, equipped with its own elevator and ludicrously long passcode for admission.
Whereas Cassius is overwhelmed by the lucre a power caller can earn in their sordid merchandizing of weaponry and human labor, the latter is associated with WorryFree, a company offering a lifetime work contract for those strapped, viz. a modern remodeling of slavery, he consciously distances himself from the union demonstration organized by his lower-ranking co-worker Squeeze (Yeun, unostentatiously exuding charisma and coolth), to seek wage increment for entry-level employees, which triggers dissension between his artist girlfriend Detroit (Thompson, a kaleidoscopic force of propulsion) and his best friend Salvador (Fowler), both stick with Squeeze's noble cause.
Facing the temptation of a life on the easy street, it is only naturally for a young man like Cassius to lower his moral compass and jump to it, only wait for an absurd kicker to wake him up. When our bright-young-thing is invited to a party hosted by the CEO of WorryFree, Steve Lift (an open-faced Armie Hammer doing his most eloquent persuasion of a beggar-belief proposition), an unexpected encounter with several horse-human hybrids, named Equisapien, jolts Cassius out of his own senses, afterwards, he can barely sit through the tête-à-tête (after a quaint claymation paying tribute to Michel Gondry), where Steve proposes a lucrative deal for him to assume the role as a figurehead among Equisapiens, the more profitable vessel of future labor (Martin Luther King, Jr. gets some sideswipe here),on the premise of taking the body transmogrification himself for a five-year span.
Hard to imagine anyone would be loopy enough to take that bargain, which only prompts Cassius to expose WorryFree's conspiracy on the live TV, following by riots and hubbub (economically shot from Cassius' compromised viewpoint inside a police wagon), when the dust settles and a renewed future with Detroit beckons, Riley mischievously actualizes Cassius' worst apprehension in the final reveal, sending his wise counsel, never toot a stranger's offering.
In the wake of today's woke, and post-GET OUT climate, it is heartening to witness many a black artist visualizing their pet projects into fruition (SORRY TO BOTHER YOU predates as a concept album of Riley's band The Coup), in Riley's case, his first sortie is a blistering mishmash of ideas, tropes and satires, slightly disorganized but invigorating nonetheless (catalyzed by a wonderfully multi-ethnic cast), that bodes really well.
referential entries: Ruben Östlund's THE SQUARE (2017, 7.9/10); Jordan Peele's GET OUT (2017, 7.3/10).
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