Attorney-client privilege turns carnal in Perry’s trashy thriller
The super-ripe Tyler Perry legal thriller “Mea Culpa” has zero hold on reality-based behavior. But life is short. Why demand something so dull of a film like this? No need pleading guilty pleasure when the movie itself pleads no contest within minutes of introducing Chicago’s most ethically fluid defense attorney, played by Kelly Rowland.
Attorney Mea Harper takes the case of murder suspect Zyair Malloy (Trevante Rhodes), big in the art world and living in a spacious loft to prove it. The legal eagle is not in a good place of her own as “Mea Culpa” embarks on its merry, trashy way. The attorney’s anesthesiologist husband (Sean Sagar) has been semi-secretly unemployed for months after getting high on his own supply. Her brother-in-law (Nick Sagar) is the district attorney, itching to prosecute Zyair and further his own mayoral ambitions.
Mea’s in-laws wriggle under the thumb of her husband’s mean-spirited mother (Kerry O’Malley), near death after a cancer diagnosis but full of vitriolic zingers. Early in Perry’s latest, mom is gifted with a wristwatch worth thousands of dollars for her birthday. “How much was it?” seethes the resentful, cash-strapped Mea on the ride home. Don’t worry, her husband replies, “I sold the piano.”
Enticed by the prospect of going head-tohead in court against her DA brother-in-law, Mea goes all in with the case of the mysterious, hunky artist. Zyair’s up against considerable circumstantial evidence, including cellphone footage of one
of his missing ex-lovers screaming “He’s going to kill me!” But did he? And what’s the story behind the bits of skull bone embedded in one of the artist’s paintings?
Mea keeps it strictly business for a scene or two. Then it turns to sex, full of candlelit finger painting on various body parts. Quicker than you can draw a jagged edge around the body of evidence, “Mea Culpa” gets squirrelier and squirrelier, though Perry’s dialogue in the earlier scenes sets the tone. “I am your attorney. I am not your friend,” Mea states for the record, although she’s no match for Zyair’s murmured come-ons.
Writer-producerdirector Perry knows what he’s doing here, and what he’s willfully overdoing. If the relatively chaste 2020 Netflix ripoff “Fatal Affair” can revive the late ’80s-mid-’90s cycle of legal trouble, Perry can too, with more skin and polish to go with the ridiculousness. Amanda Jones’ cello-lined score is a plus, even if its restraint is at odds with the reasons we watch stuff like this. Which are?
For many, the reasons go back to the simple pleasures of heckling, either
out loud or in our own interior monologues. It’s not about derision, even with set-ups and payoffs as outlandish as those in “Mea Culpa.” When Zyair forces his lawyer to watch him with an anonymous nude groupie, appearing out of thin air, it’s practically an improv prompt.
Without giving away the last 20 minutes, the movie reminds the audience that anyone who offers someone red wine and says “Here, I made you a drink” is walking human neon sign spelling danger. There’s no “making” a glass of wine. There’s just the “pouring.” “Making” is saying “glassful of trouble,” which tends to give the game away a little more pointedly than warranted.
Tyler Perry the screenwriter may never come close to the skill level of Tyler Perry the first-rate actor; he does not appear on screen, which is unfortunate. But Tyler Perry the producing entertainment force remains an empire of its own.
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