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Title: paternalism w/o character development
Review: The music was good. The people seemed real but skin-deep: booze, drugs, guns, stupidity, self-destructive violence and instant sex. There's no depth to any of the characters. The question remains how can you make a movie with Chess treating his artists like children financially (read" PATERNALLY), but the movie doesn't make clear if he is scamming them or not. Muddy Waters doesn't seem to have a clue what money is his and how much and why. Chess buys him a car as if he's an empty-headed girlfriend, and as such gets paid with whatever Chess decides to give him. Etta James decides he "loved her" because he left her the deed (doesnt say mortgage is paid off) of a house that cost in 1970 (year Chess died) about $35,000. Chess sold his company for over $6,000,000, and that doesnt count the millions he made on the way up. In short, they had an opportunity to make a complex character, and instead make a superficial and (almost boring) one.
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