Would you like to learn more about the true story of Papa Joe, a man who lives in an impoverished community who helps local kids? Well, too damn bad because Unconditional is going to give you a drama about a fictional redhead whose fictional husband got killed in the projects. She is roused from despair when she decided to resume her childhood love of saving black people in order to restore her faith in God as a somewhat ulterior motive to finding her husband’s murderer. What!?! She even pulls a George Zimmerman for a minute because she thinks that she found the man who murdered her husband because he wipes his hand in a red towel, has a red hoodie and is a black man with a deep voice even though we know that it isn’t him because he saves orphans from murderers and the foster care system in his spare time. The only dangerous person in the “projects” is the red head running around with a gun. She learns a valuable lesson about not being such a racist ass that jumps to conclusions and invades people’s homes. Seriously a community can’t be that bad if people are grilling, sitting on their stoop and leaving front doors unlocked and open. Side note: the husband’s murderer was a white guy, but the black people hold such innately medicinal powers that she no longer feels driven to find him. Again WHAT?!?
Lest you think that Unconditional is an old movie when filmmakers thought that a black protagonist could not gain mainstream interest so they would center a white character that played a less pivotal role in historical reality, I am horrified to inform you that this movie was released in 2012! This movie is so questionable that I began to doubt even the most basic elements of the movie. I briefly Googled how dialysis works because Papa Joe drags a gargantuan machine around and keeps collapsing just short of hooking himself up to it. I am not familiar with Tennessee, but do the “projects” stand just around the corner from the unblemished countryside? Do prisons still have record players or did these writers watch Shawshank Redemption too many times? Medical professionals don’t give updates to people who aren’t family or without explicit permission from the patient even if that person brought the patient in. If a car hits you, and you are injured so badly that you are admitted to the hospital, do you get released the next day and are just fine with no problems?
Unconditional tries to teach audiences that racism is bad while actively being racist and probably patting itself on the back. Please note that I was initially optimistic because of its initial depictions of childhood racism, which unsurprisingly were real, but as the movie progresses, and Papa Joe has to fight a prison gang of black people to save his white cornbread loving friend even though he is just a computer hacker and not a comic based vigilante hero, I realized that this movie was clueless and had no understanding of subtle distinctions between systematic racism, prejudice or nerds.
I watch enough Christian produced movies to know that they don’t have to be THIS bad. To show that a couple is in love, they hide chickens in armoires and then chase each other on horseback because Unconditional could not show anything more explicit than chaste kissing in nature, which is fine, but my mother was puzzled by the chickens. Just stick to riding horses, standing in crashing ocean waves and other nature visual metaphors for sex. The chickens are innocent and don’t need any part of your sexual shenanigans.
Also Unconditional suffers the Sleepy Hollow problem. Usually the two hot leads, i.e. the people with the most lines, end up together so that would mean Papa Joe and redhead main character. Also in a movie about a grieving widow, usually finding love is a necessary element to a happy ending. This movie does not do that because suddenly reality matters because they are black and white so the woman who barely gets any lines and plays his real life wife, Denise, is suddenly thrown into the mix near the end of the middle of the movie. Redhead and Papa Joe are sitting together in the most romantic setting then redhead basically says, “You don’t see it do you.” Then we cut to Denise staring at him adoringly. Don’t worry, audience. No miscegenation here! You know how you could have solved this problem? Don’t create a fictional character that has no business in this story and focus on Joe and Denise Bradford’s story!
I was interested in Unconditional because it stars Michael Ealy, whom I loved in Almost Human, but it isn’t worth a moment of your time. A special shout out goes to veteran actor Bruce McGill, who plays a racist detective. Lynn Collins plays the redhead, but I don’t remember her in True Blood, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Lake House, 50 First Dates, 13 Going on 30 or The Merchant of Venice.
This dreadful, well-meaning mess is insulting on so many levels, but the root of its problem actually stems from its cynical lack of faith that an audience won’t be sufficiently interested in the real life black protagonist. Normally movies make me curious about the real story, but I suspect that reading Joe Bradford’s autobiography, A Walk of Love, will just make me madder at Unconditional for wasting my time. If it isn’t too late for you, skip the movie and read the book! Hopefully the book will be better.