“Wake up, God-dammit!”
Talk to Me tells the (partially) true life story of,
Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene, Jr. (the great Don Cheadle),
an ex-con who finagles his way into a job as a radio talk show host
at WOL 1450 AM in the politically-torn Washington D.C. Petey’s
knack for telling it like it is causes quite a few ears to perk up while
he’s on the air and soon, Petey is the talk of the town and an
icon for the Black Community.
Director Kasi Lemmons does a marvelous job bringing the look and feel
of the era back to life and the performances by Cheadle, the damn-sexy
Taraji P. Henson, Joe Estevez’s better-known brother Martin Sheen
and even the usually-annoying Cedric the Entertainer. However,
it’s the incredibly handsome Chiwetel Ejiofor as Dewey Hughes
who really steals the show (if they ever make a black James Bond film,
this guy gets my vote!). Dewey is an intelligent man who lives
vicariously through Petey because he is either unable or afraid to speak
his mind (someone a lot of people can relate to).
 While the film may have a few flaws (what film doesn’t?), it
is nevertheless remarkably well put together and is definitely worth
watching. It’s unfortunate that the film didn’t fare
very well at the box office: moviegoers passed this up to see meaty-faced
Matt Damon running around and talking on the phone while shooting people
in The Bourne Ultimatum instead (like Julia Stiles
is anywhere near as hot as she was when she was jailbait…jeez!). You’d
expect a major studio like Universal Studios to not try to pit two entirely
different films (their own films at that!) against each other
in the box office…but that’s Universal for you! Marketing Talk
to Me as a comedy probably didn’t help, either...it isn’t. In
fact, it’s a well-made (if somewhat light) biopic.
 Presentation
Since the film is brand new, you can expect the film presentation
to look gorgeous. And it does. The movie is presented at
a 2.35:1 ratio and is anamorphic enhanced. Sound-wise, the DVD
boasts a wonderful 5.1 Dolby Digital English track, with subtitles in
English (SDH), French and Spanish.
Extras
Surprisingly, Universal did a fairly-decent job with the extras;
we’re treated to 8 minutes of Deleted Scenes, the 10 minute featurette “Who
Is Petey Greene?” featuring cast and crew alike, and lastly, “Recreating
P-Town”; a Behind-the-Scenes segment with the crew as they discuss
bringing the wonderful fashions from the 60s and 70s back to life. My
beef this time around with Universal is the lack of any Commentary
tracks with either cast or crew. From what little I talked with
director Kasi Lemmons in an interview, I doubt she would have any problem
carrying on about the making of this film and I’m sure some of
the actors  could spare a couple of hours, too. Perhaps Universal
is planning on re-releasing the film later in an all-new Special Edition…you
never know quite what to expect from Universal, do you? This is
the studio that re-released the first two American Pie films
on at least four different occasions…each! And
yet, when it comes to good films like, say…King
Kong vs. Godzilla, it took a small eternity before they would
even release a singular, sub-par release (and don‘t get me started
on Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (we will buy
a Special Edition, Universal…hell, people are paying $150 for
the ol’ bare-bones, out-of-print DVD that Image Entertainment
released, aren’t they?) The DVD release for Owen Wilson’s
awful You, Me and Dupree contained two commentary tracks,
deleted footage and more while Woody Allen’s much-better flick Scoop (released
on DVD the same day) didn’t contain as much as a trailer (and
yet Wilson’s the one who tries to kill himself!).
The Bottom Line
Talk to Me is a well-made film, and certainly better than The
Bourne Ultimatum. So there!
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