First Sunday
Directed by David E. Talbert
“I don’t know what goes on in church. I never been.” That’s Tracy Morgan’s First Sunday character, admitting a reality about contemporary Black American life that goes against Hollywood’s usual stereotype of the churchified African American. You expect only stereotypes from David E. Talbert, a playwright-entrepreneur who has lucratively worked the same ethnic territory as Tyler Perry. But in First Sunday (his movie directorial debut), Talbert takes a dangerous risk. He makes comedy out of a pair of trifling brothas—Durell Douglas Washington (Ice Cube) and LeeJohn Jacob Jackson (Morgan)—who plot to rob a church in their Baltimore neighborhood. Darnell needs money to keep his babymama from leaving town with his son, LeeJohn needs money to payoff some threatening Jamaican crooks.
First Sunday’s premise is outrageous—in fact, irreverent verging on offensive—but Talbert dares contemplate the changed fact of contemporary Black American unholiness. According to Protestant tradition, the first Sunday of each month is a day of Communion: Churchgoers partake of the wine and bread (blood-and-body-of-Christ) sacrament. It’s a day of common faith and unity, but Talbert realizes how far modern ghetto life has gotten from that ideal. Snoop Dogg’s recent best-selling album was titled From tha Chuuch to tha Palace, a misspelling that conveyed the same distance from tradition that Tracy Morgan confesses. It turns out, First Sunday isn’t about moral ignorance or how scandalous ghetto thugs can be; instead, Talbert observes the difficulty of social communion.
Darnell and LeeJohn pick out First Hope Community Church with its motto, “We don’t believe in last hope.” The most striking detail of this setting is a church banner that reads “EACH ONE REACH ONE.” It’s a far cry from The Great Debaters, where Denzel Washington writes “REVOLUTION” on a blackboard and never refers to it again, or Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Radio where a teacher writes “HEGEMONY” on a blackboard, then ignores the concept. The bizarre/amazing fact of First Sunday is that Talbert audaciously recalls religion as the historically revolutionary center of African-American social action and challenges the hegemony of vicious and avaricious hip-hop.
None of this makes First Sunday a great movie (it surely is not that; far from the class of Sounder or Akeelah and the Bee), but it is a rare film that recognizes complex facts of social existence. Critics can easily ignore it for refusing the secular reinforcement of anti-human, nihilistic movies like There Will Be Blood. After P.T. Anderson’s Christianity-bashing field day, there was good reason to fear that a new Ice Cube caper movie would join Hollywood’s secular-progression to Hell. LeeJohn has never been to church, yet he behaves like someone who’s certainly been to the movies to see Menace II Society or a Wayans Brothers flick. He’s internalized the fecklessness and selfishness often expressed by hip-hop cinema.
Talbert emulates Dog Day Afternoon’s plot structure, except this is God’s Day Afternoon: Church members are held hostage by a pair of inept crooks who pass time with choir members and church mothers who haven’t given up hope or faith. Durell and LeeJohn are “saved” by the insistence on healing and forgiveness. “If God can give these boys a second chance, why can’t we?” says pastor Chi McBride. Talbert’s point is to redeem—not excuse—a pair of crumb-bum young men whom a public defender describes as, “A perfect example of potential with no purpose.”
Most movies pretend that these types of Americans (black or white) don’t exist. What makes First Sunday undismissable is Talbert’s brand of folksy neorealism. Cube’s hard, swollen, angry face briefly softens in the scene where Darnell’s love for his son surpasses the accidental relationship with his babymama. It contrasts his moment-of-truth with Momma T (Root’s great Olivia Cole) who shames him into remembering his public and family image. The usually buffoonish Tracy Morgan has an extraordinary dramatic scene where a church woman (Loretta Devine) recognizes his birthday. Even trash comic Katt Williams makes sense of a quasi-gay choir director—an anomaly everybody knows without acknowledging. First Sunday isn’t the most refined moviemaking you’ll ever see, but it gives 2008 cinema a perfectly humane start.
Directed by David E. Talbert
“I don’t know what goes on in church. I never been.” That’s Tracy Morgan’s First Sunday character, admitting a reality about contemporary Black American life that goes against Hollywood’s usual stereotype of the churchified African American. You expect only stereotypes from David E. Talbert, a playwright-entrepreneur who has lucratively worked the same ethnic territory as Tyler Perry. But in First Sunday (his movie directorial debut), Talbert takes a dangerous risk. He makes comedy out of a pair of trifling brothas—Durell Douglas Washington (Ice Cube) and LeeJohn Jacob Jackson (Morgan)—who plot to rob a church in their Baltimore neighborhood. Darnell needs money to keep his babymama from leaving town with his son, LeeJohn needs money to payoff some threatening Jamaican crooks.
First Sunday’s premise is outrageous—in fact, irreverent verging on offensive—but Talbert dares contemplate the changed fact of contemporary Black American unholiness. According to Protestant tradition, the first Sunday of each month is a day of Communion: Churchgoers partake of the wine and bread (blood-and-body-of-Christ) sacrament. It’s a day of common faith and unity, but Talbert realizes how far modern ghetto life has gotten from that ideal. Snoop Dogg’s recent best-selling album was titled From tha Chuuch to tha Palace, a misspelling that conveyed the same distance from tradition that Tracy Morgan confesses. It turns out, First Sunday isn’t about moral ignorance or how scandalous ghetto thugs can be; instead, Talbert observes the difficulty of social communion.
Darnell and LeeJohn pick out First Hope Community Church with its motto, “We don’t believe in last hope.” The most striking detail of this setting is a church banner that reads “EACH ONE REACH ONE.” It’s a far cry from The Great Debaters, where Denzel Washington writes “REVOLUTION” on a blackboard and never refers to it again, or Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Radio where a teacher writes “HEGEMONY” on a blackboard, then ignores the concept. The bizarre/amazing fact of First Sunday is that Talbert audaciously recalls religion as the historically revolutionary center of African-American social action and challenges the hegemony of vicious and avaricious hip-hop.
None of this makes First Sunday a great movie (it surely is not that; far from the class of Sounder or Akeelah and the Bee), but it is a rare film that recognizes complex facts of social existence. Critics can easily ignore it for refusing the secular reinforcement of anti-human, nihilistic movies like There Will Be Blood. After P.T. Anderson’s Christianity-bashing field day, there was good reason to fear that a new Ice Cube caper movie would join Hollywood’s secular-progression to Hell. LeeJohn has never been to church, yet he behaves like someone who’s certainly been to the movies to see Menace II Society or a Wayans Brothers flick. He’s internalized the fecklessness and selfishness often expressed by hip-hop cinema.
Talbert emulates Dog Day Afternoon’s plot structure, except this is God’s Day Afternoon: Church members are held hostage by a pair of inept crooks who pass time with choir members and church mothers who haven’t given up hope or faith. Durell and LeeJohn are “saved” by the insistence on healing and forgiveness. “If God can give these boys a second chance, why can’t we?” says pastor Chi McBride. Talbert’s point is to redeem—not excuse—a pair of crumb-bum young men whom a public defender describes as, “A perfect example of potential with no purpose.”
Most movies pretend that these types of Americans (black or white) don’t exist. What makes First Sunday undismissable is Talbert’s brand of folksy neorealism. Cube’s hard, swollen, angry face briefly softens in the scene where Darnell’s love for his son surpasses the accidental relationship with his babymama. It contrasts his moment-of-truth with Momma T (Root’s great Olivia Cole) who shames him into remembering his public and family image. The usually buffoonish Tracy Morgan has an extraordinary dramatic scene where a church woman (Loretta Devine) recognizes his birthday. Even trash comic Katt Williams makes sense of a quasi-gay choir director—an anomaly everybody knows without acknowledging. First Sunday isn’t the most refined moviemaking you’ll ever see, but it gives 2008 cinema a perfectly humane start.
