<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" AMERICAN MOVIES HAVE BECOME SO TIMID, so pathologically leery of giving offense, that unapologetic trash wielded with bulldozing conviction now has the power to inspire something like awe. Black Snake Moan, Craig Brewer&amp;#039;s follow-up to last year&amp;#039;s Sundance sensation Hustle &amp;amp;amp; Flow, comes as close to exploitation heaven as any studio-based film made in the past 20 years. You watch it unfold--detonate, more like--with giddy incredulousness, stunned that somebody actually had the guts to put such supercharged images on the screen. That doesn&amp;#039;t automatically make it a great movie, but it does make it a valuable one, especially in a culture given to endless hand-wringing over dull, mealymouthed Ron Howard versions of airport novels. One glance at Christina Ricci, clad in a T-shirt and panties, sporting a shiner, and affixed to Samuel L. Jackson&amp;#039;s radiator via a massive chain around her waist, and the question of who Jesus did or didn&amp;#039;t bone 2,000 years ago quickly starts to seem academic.  Brewer wastes no time getting flagrantly, joyously offensive, superimposing the film&amp;#039;s title (borrowed from an old blues number) over a slow-motion shot of Ricci&amp;#039;s Rae sashaying down a country road in a midriff-baring top and hot pants, blocking the path of a massive tractor trailer and giving it (and us) the finger when it honks for her to move her ass. The next time we see Rae, she&amp;#039;s writhing around on the ground in what appears to be pain but turns out--I kid you not--to be heat. In interviews, Brewer tends to bristle when the word nymphomaniac is invoked, but that&amp;#039;s gotta be a calculated put-on; Black Snake Moan is a serious portrait of sexual addiction the way Deliverance is a serious portrait of congenital birth defects. Rae&amp;#039;s gotta have it, and when Lazarus (Jackson, shaved partially bald), a farmer and sometime blues musician still smarting from his ex-wife&amp;#039;s infidelity, finds her lying unconscious in a ditch not far from his home, he determines to change her evil ways--by force, if necessary.  Needless to say, this is patently absurd and becomes even more so when Lazarus, in what seems like a wholly unconscious gesture of pitch-black irony, breaks out the chains. But while it&amp;#039;s possible to dismiss Black Snake Moan intellectually or to bemoan its Neanderthal retrogressiveness, the sheer primal force of the film&amp;#039;s imagery is both undeniable and oddly liberating. At first, I thought Ricci an odd choice for this particular role. With her otherworldly Kewpie-doll features and aloof demeanor, she&amp;#039;s not the first actress you&amp;#039;d think of to embody unadulterated carnality. In true exploitation fashion, though, Rae isn&amp;#039;t so much a character as a body with an attitude, both of which Ricci has here in spades. Both Ricci and Jackson trust Brewer not to make them look like cretins, and he rewards their trust, at least for a while, by treating this ludicrous scenario as if it were unholy writ. Exploitation films admittedly cater to our least refined emotions, but by asking us to grapple with ideas that make us uncomfortable or even angry, they also, in a weird way, treat us with uncommon respect. Alas, Brewer ultimately chickens out. Once the chains finally come off, Black Snake Moan loses the courage of its convictions. Rae&amp;#039;s affliction, which was unproblematic so long as it bore no relationship to the real world, gets laboriously explained (yep, the usual childhood trauma), transforming her from nutzoid case study to just another screwed-up victim of circumstance. The movie itself devolves into a soggy redemption drama, with everyone involved (including Justin Timberlake as Rae&amp;#039;s long-suffering beau) learning valuable life lessons and other standard-issue indie-film bullshit. In short, Brewer covers his ass. But, paradoxically, the less offensive Black Snake Moan gets, the more truly offensive it becomes. Wrapping everything up in a neat, morally defensible package only serves to make the twisted smackdown at the film&amp;#039;s center feel hypocritical and opportunistic. Brewer wants to tear the lid off, and he clearly has the instincts to do it. But he also wants us to really, really like him. Should he ever reconcile those warring instincts, multiplexes may go up in flames. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a511/esq0906film-82-1/>