Netflix present Chadwick Boseman (Jacob King), Luke Evans (Wentworth), Alfred Molina (Preston), Teresa Palmer (Kelly), Arthur Darbinyan (Ducmajan), Lucan Melkonian (Zico), Diago Josef (Armand), Natalie Martinez (Trish), Chris Mulky (Leary), Jenno Roberts (Rice), Ava Kolker (Rice), Amin El Gamal (Martine). Director, Fabrice Du Welz; Screenplay by Stephen Cornwell/ Oliver Butcher; Producers, Stephen Cornwell/David Lancaster/ Simon Cornwell; Executive Producers, Xavier Merchand/Benedict Carver/Alexei Boltho/Rhodri Thomas. © 2016
This is a romantic tale of the chivalry of a man, Jacob King (Chadwick Boseman). He came from the Transvaal, South Africa, with only $6oo in his pocket, and arrives in Los Angeles’s concrete jungle searching for his only sister, Bianca. He has a cockney accent of Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee (1986), making everyone around him think of him funny, but he’s no joke. A great ass-kicker he stands out to be!
Jacob instinctively had the premonitory feeling of Bianca. “Jacob, it’s Bianca. I’m in trouble. I need your help, please. I have something they want. Jacob, I don’t know what to do. Please call me.” Jacob didn’t call but jumps on a plane, arrives in Los Angeles with $600 in his pocket, looking for Bianca. He is clueless about where and how to start looking for his sister until he meets Trish (Natalie Martinez). She knew Bianca and even has keepsakes of her.
The first lead Jacob has is to Zico (Lucan Melkonian). But when Jacob approaches him, “Never heard of him.” Someone in the group says. It seems he hits a dead end. Not entirely, though. Back at his hotel, Jacob goes through the keepsakes Trish gave him, and he found valuable information about his sister. The initial search leads him to the mortuary and finds the mangled remains of his sister. A knack in his throat, he manages to swallow hard and yells for the loss. He has to find whoever killed his sister.
He goes back to Zico and his gang and trashes them with his bare hand even as they wield knife and dagger at him, and leaves them with: “Whoever you work for, tell them this was a message from the King.” Yes, they get the message, alright. Jacob sensitizes the underground world of Los Angeles. As he combs the asphalt jungle of the city for his sister’s killers, so they are terrorized and desperate to get him first.
Jacob goes to Trish’s party, sensing that the drug dealer who got his sister into a dope head would be there. As resolute as he could get, not even Trish will dissuade him from his mission, even as she tries to go down on him. It didn’t take long when Frankie, Bianca’s former dealer, enters. There are quick, nervous exchanges between Jacob and Frankie. Jacob follows him outside to his car. Bludgeons Frankie’s face with a bicycle spoke chain wrapped around his hand and straps him at his throat to confess. “Zico and Duke,” he says.
Next, he carries the war to their front. He went looking for Paul Wentworth, who Jacob assumes had bludgeoned Bianca’s face by pulling out her teeth. The meeting between Jacob and Wentworth caused the dentist to panic. Wentworth leaves the meeting with Jacob straight to Leary’s house, then leaves and goes to Mike’s. All along, Jacob is following in the beat-up Nissan sedan. At Mike’s home, Wentworth breaks the news.
“It’s Bianca. She’s got a brother. He’s in town. Says he has what we’ve been looking for. He’s out of control, Mike.”
Mike, “You told me Bianca was not a problem anymore.”
“Bianca isn’t a problem anymore…I spent three hours in my office patching up one of Duke’s men.”
“What does he want?”
“$750,000. This isn’t negotiable, Mike. Did Bianca ever tell you where she was from?”
“South Africa, somewhere.”
“Cape Flat. One of the highest murder rates in the world. The numbers gang…We have no idea what he’s capable.”
After Wentworth leaves Mike, he passes by the beat-up sedan in the neighborhood. Not long, Jacob is pulled over by two dirty cops on Wentworth’s payroll. The two cops beat the hell out of Jacob, and just when they are about to kill him, a garbage truck pulls up on the scene. While the police talked with the truck driver, Jacob crawls from the location and is saved by Kelly, the neighbor whose car he had borrowed.
Kelly (Teresa Palmer) nurses Jacob in her motel room until he can get on his feet and returns to Mike’s home for the final showdown. He outsmarts Mike’s gun, pointed at him, kills him, and clears the safe with all the money he had. Jacob summoned all the killers to Mike’s home, including Duke and his men, and Wentworth. He sets a home-made explosive for a trap. And as they arrive, Jacob escapes with Armand, and he lets go of the switch on the explosive. All of them perish in the inferno. Mission accomplish.
Jacob has to follow his sister to rescue her from the hounds of California. They were three, Isaac, Bianca, and Jacob. Isaac was killed by a gang in South Africa. No parental history in the film. Bianca had snuck out of South Africa with her Arab husband, running away from the Numbers Gang. In California, she and her husband got involved with shady fellows who eventually killed her husband. Bianca, in need of money, sold her husband’s son to a pedophile, Mike. At one point, Bianca wanted the boy back, and that is why she got killed. Jacob gives all the money from Mike’s safe to Kelly and her daughter, as they skip town as well.
You’ve never seen the best of Chadwick Bossman until you see him in Ma’ Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020). After watching…Black Bottom, I conclude that Denzel creates a character that is not only his protégé but his utter ego. In Soldier’s Story (1984), we witnessed the young Private First Lass, Peterson (Denzel Washington), committed the murder of a senior army officer for racism against negros. Levee (Chadwick Bossman) musters a similar rage with which he murders a fellow band member in Ma’ Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020). Denzel sees so much of him in young Chad.
NOTE: Africanmoviestar regrets the untimely departure of Chadwick Bossman from this earth. Chad leaves his footprints in the sands of time. Go gentle into that dark brother; you left us with the everlasting monument you built for yourself.