 Postmodern cultural critic bell hooks cited the interaction in the Memphis train station between Thomas and the Japanese couple as one of the few examples of nuanced , deconstructive and subversive treatment of blackness in American film . The Chicago Sun @-@ Times ' Roger Ebert proclaimed that " [ t ] he best thing about Mystery Train is that it takes you to an America you feel you ought to be able to find for yourself , if you only knew where to look . " In an April 2000 retrospective of Jarmusch 's work for Sight & Sound , Shawn Levy concluded that the film was " as much a valentine to the allure of the American way of pop culture as it is a cheeky bit of structural legerdemain without terribly much resonating significance " . 
