I was actually excited to see An Acceptable Loss. I did not know much about it going into the film other than a friend recommended it and told me that it starred a black woman and Jaimie Lee Curtis, which was enough for me. I have loved Curtis unconditionally since I was a baby regardless of the character that she played or her hairstyles, which in spite of beliefs to the contrary, has changed over the years. I also am rooting for Tika Sumpter, who is so gorgeous and talented that I do not understand why she has not single handedly conquered the world. She was memorable as my First Lady Michelle Obama in Southside with You and disappeared like a chameleon into her character in HBO’s Bessie, but also has to pay the mortgage by putting on a brave face in such dreckitude as Nobody’s Fool. I am so happy that she is getting a steady, respectable paycheck in the delightful ABC television sitcom Mixed-ish though no one who watches Black-ish could believe that she is playing the same character as Anna Deavere Smith, but that is neither here nor there.
I was so annoyed that An Acceptable Loss never got a theatrical run near me and exasperated that it took longer than other films released around the same time to become available on DVD, though it was immediately available to people with On Demand. It took over a year, people! Well, I am proud to say that it is not due to sexism or racism, but merit because this movie is not good. It has strong elements, but it never coheres into an entertaining or challenging film. The first half of this film is mostly devoted to a couple of actors, which includes Sumpter, emoting silently and alone so we can project our assumptions about them on to the characters instead of writers and filmmakers doing their damn job. With a running time of one hour, forty-minutes, fifty one minutes is too long to build up to a stale thriller that at least commits one merciful act by not asking us to believe that the opposite sex couple thrown together and trying to survive to tell the truth are remotely attracted to each other though how any heterosexual man could not be attracted to Sumpter should make that man question his sexuality. She is so pretty. Honestly when they were running together, and she needed a breather, I wanted to throw something at the screen because when she is not emoting, she is jogging throughout the first half of the movie. Why?!?
An Acceptable Loss is like the downside of being a vampire if you think that you are cool, but you are actually out of step with current times, painfully outdated and not germane to current discourse. For this movie to work, it needed to be released during or soon after the W’s administration so it could feel daring, fresh and relevant. The Iraq War clearly inspired it, and Sumpter’s character seems like a composite character based on Colin Powell, John Yoo and Condoleezza Rice except younger and more attractive. Did I mention that Sumpter is stunning?
An Acceptable Loss felt as if it started with the ending first, and it is a great ending. It was almost good enough to make me want to lie to myself that everything that preceded it was actually good and not a colossal waste of my time. It was so deliciously merciless that it gave me Usual Suspects chills. Also I loved that the film embraced the idea of women in power like any person with power, not this stereotypical nonsense that women in power would mean world peace, puppies and flowers while eating a salad and loving it. Women can be overly ambitious, in love with their theoretical ideas and blind to real world effects and people. Unfortunately the film restricted Curtis and Sumpter’s wheeling and dealing to flashbacks and the B story instead of front and center. I do not know why the film decided to play coy as if everyone and their mother could not guess what the committed atrocity was even though it was obvious.It is not a big reveal if we already know.
Even though it was underdeveloped, An Acceptable Loss has a sumptuous subtext that people are really comfortable with confronting and screaming at Sumpter’s character because she is a black woman. I never forgot the story when someone screamed at Condi for buying boots while committing atrocities, which is fair. Now everyone in Presidon’t administration can get the business from any Joe or Joanne Shmoe, but that was unusual back with the exception of W ducking shoes at press conferences. Most other officials, including and especially Powell still received respectful treatment. This subtext could have been an accidental positive feature, underwritten because the writer was a white guy who was not fully prepared to explore the motivations of a black woman who does not come from Curtis’ characters’ world of generational wealth yet related to her in such a deep way that she is able to briefly sell her soul for professional and personal camaraderie. Maybe he tried or just accidentally hit the nerve, but did not completely get it. In one cocktail scene, an older white woman trying to express solidarity says haters when you know that she has never used colloquialisms a day in her life to anyone other than the protagonist. Sumpter’s discomfort with drawing the support of the fifty-three percenters is palpable. Sumpter definitely was playing with it, especially during the scene of disgust when they switch the flat screen television to a football game, and everyone else is just going through their day without empathy as if it was routine. It is the most powerful scene when the movie opens on it, and we later see the entire background for that scene.
If An Acceptable Loss commits a cardinal sin, it is for hoping that its audience will assume that one of its characters is a terrorist when it was completely obvious what that character’s backstory was going to be. Shame on you for hoping that we are racist! If you actually saw this movie and considered that as a possibility, you maybe need to do some soul searching because you could either be trash or not watch enough movies. Why does this character inexplicably know how to do so much random espionage stuff? I know that it is easier to do than ever before, but still if I wanted to break and enter someone’s house, I would not be as smooth my first time out. I also felt as if the film waited too long to develop the idea that the protagonist’s seclusion was rooted not just in spiritually retreat and repentance, but paranoia. It felt as if it was a late stage copying of Scandal to jazz up the philosophical debate.
The award for best supporting characters more realistic than any other character in An Acceptable Loss goes to Jordan and Neil for the following dialogue, “What was he doing in the dark like that?” “This is what I’ve been saying.” I love those two and related to their astonishment over everyone’s machinations. Do not get sucked into the drama and live your lives!
An Acceptable Loss is a shallow movie that uses wartime morality as the respectable veneer to disguise its need to show Sumpter wielding a gun in a bathtub and truck in old international espionage thriller tropes on a national to local level. The only way that I will retroactively rescind this poor review is if we get a sequel showing the protagonist’s mother played by some notable older black woman actor in an unlikely action role out for revenge even though she is just an ordinary woman, and she faces off against Curtis and her overzealous underlings. Just be completely shameless and cast Khandi Alexander as the guilt ridden mom.