LOOSE LIPS SINK ...
No, it doesn’t matter that Samuel L. Jackson plays George Washington Williams, a real-life AfricanAmerican lawyer and politician. Here Williams, speaking like a wiseass hipster circa 2016 has gone to England to persuade whitey white Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgard), to travel with him to the Congo to investigate the enslavement of natives by King Leopold of Belgium. No, a black man can’t do it alone. He needs a bizarrely educated, perfectly mannered white ape boy, raised by gorillas, to do it. Jackson’s character, unfortunately soon becomes the black foil to Tarzan the Great White Hope. Williams’ character, is, as they used to say before we were supposedly enlightened, the token negro. He’s even wearing a garish purple outfit and spewing outrageous dialogue when we meet him at a stuffy, white diplomatic conference in England. It’s the first indication that you’ve entered a movie time machine. Luckily, Jackson is such a good actor he can make you forget—well for minutes at a time anyway—why he’s there, which seems to be only to assuage white moviegoer guilt. And by the way? It doesn’t work. After seeing this thing, I felt as guilty as a slaver myself.
In this laugh-til-you-cringe action movie, Tarzan, blond locks flowing, pecs a’flying, not only has to save his wife, Jane (Margot Robbie), from the evil white slaver, but has to almost single-handedly defeat an entire army, as well as a phalanx of evil black tribal guys in white face. Why? To again almost-single handedly free all the black slaves in the Congo. Tarzan slaver slayer!
No, you won’t see any “Roots” type brutal reality here. Instead the slaves get captured, but easily escape with the help of Tarzan and Jane’s resourcefulness and some help from Williams who can fire a canon like nobody.
Even the great actor Djimon Hounsou who plays a tribal leader out to kill Tarzan, is totally wasted despite his nifty leopard getup.
But the worst of it doesn’t come until the end when all the freed slaves and tribesmen in loin cloths, line up to cheer Tarzan for saving them.
The director, David Yates, actually told The Los Angeles Times that, “All that racist baggage that belonged to the earlier books or earlier B-movies, there’s no place for that. This is a modern film with modern sensibilities.” God help us if he’s right.
Reality check: Over 10 million Congolese slaves died horrible deaths and Yates thinks his “Tarzan” scenario in which the black slaves were really saved by a white ape man is not racist? Is Yates ape-s--t?
If you didn’t know better, you’d think the latest “Tarzan” was a Mel Brooks production. All that’s missing are dancing slaves in chains.
Springtime for Leopold in Africa! Name, rank, serial number, passwords, technical details, details about their ship, you name it and they told it. What in the hell happened to honor among the military? After U.S. sailors were captured by the Islamic Military Guard for being in Iranian waters after their ship broke down, our sailors spilled the beans like a bunch of blind chefs in a vegan restaurant. Worse, the Commander of U.S. Naval Forces after a lengthy investigation, declared, they were “poorly trained sailors with lack of oversight in vessels that were not materially ready for the evolution.” Except for acting like captive cowards caught floating around in a crappy, ill-equipped ship, it was all good.