CALLED OUT
Stanfield’s telemarketer makes Faustian bargain in ‘Sorry to Bother You’
Not as rigorous as Jordan Peele’s 2017 sensation “Get Out,” writerdirector-rapper Boots Riley’s social satire “Sorry to Bother You” features Lakeith Stanfield of “Get Out” as a gifted telemarketer striving to make it to the next level. Set in Oakland, Calif., where violent protests rage in the streets and the most popular TV show has its contestants get beaten bloody on camera, the film begins with Cassius Green (Stanfield) landing a telemarketing job just in time. His Uncle Sergio (Terry Crews) is sick of Cassius and his performance artist girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson), living in his garage and not paying any rent for months. After being hired by a crazed manager (Robert Longstreet) to work at a company whose motto is “S.T.T.S.” aka “Stick to the Script,” Cassius is advised by older man Langston (an icy cool Danny Glover) to use his “white voice” (voice of David Cross) on the phone if he wants to get ahead. It works. Soon, Cassius is in line to become a “power caller” and move to the mysterious floor above. Meanwhile, Detroit is out on a street corner, twirling a sign with socially aware messages on it at passersby, and desperate ordinary people are signing up for a work program called “Worry Free,” which provides employment, food and shelter and not so eerily resembles incarceration. What Cassius learns, especially after meeting the company’s odd entrepreneur, CEO Steve Lift (amusingly twisted Armie Hammer), is that he’s gotten in deeper and more is at stake than he ever expected.
“Sorry to Bother You” is a socially relevant variation on a theme of “Faust.” But it also recalls everything from Spike Jonze’s “Being John Malkovich” (1999) and last year’s “Downsizing” to Lindsay Anderson’s “O Lucky Man!” (1973) and an H.G. Wells classic. I wish Thompson had more to do than play the girlfriend, but her star continues to rise. In the supporting cast, the standouts are the aforementioned Glover and Crews, Jermaine Fowler and Omari Hardwick as Cassius’ co-workers, Kate Berlant and Michael X. Sommers as company managers and Steve Yeun of “The Walking Dead” as Squeeze, a telemarketer heading a movement to unionize. As the Faustian Cassius, Stanfield (“Crown Heights,” “Snowden,” TV’s “Atlanta”) delivers a deeply befuddled Oakland everyman performance that carries the film and its concepts as if they were light as air, instead of dead serious.
(“Sorry to Bother You” contains profanity, nudity, drug use, violence and disturbing images.)