Black Snake Moan (15)

Many people going to this film after seeing the poster of a pouting half-naked Christina Ricci shackled in chains, will be expecting a gleefully trashy B-movie in the style of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s upcoming Grindhouse double-bill. Unfortunately, director Craig Brewer, previously known for his 2005 Oscar-nominated hit Hustle and Flow, has loftier ambitions. Once bible-spouting morality tale and pulpy exploitation movie, the end result is a heavy-handed stinker which leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

Ricci plays Rae, a piece of prime trailer-trash and raging nymphomaniac who goes wild after her soldier boyfriend, Ronnie (Timberlake) leaves for Iraq. After going off the rails on drink and drugs, she is raped by Ronnie’s best friend and left by the roadside, where she is found by Lazarus (Jackson) a bible-spouting Memphis musician suffering from a crisis of faith after being left by his wife.

Lazarus takes her home to tend to her wounds, and soon discovers her reputation around town as the local slut. Believing he has a mission from God to save her soul, Lazarus comes up with a unusual method to cure her from her whorish ways – chaining her to his radiator without allowing her to wear anything more than a crop top and a pair of white undies. And yes, I’m not joking, it works.

The premise would be laughable if it weren’t so offensive. One has to worry about Brewer’s sexual politics. The redemption narrative, which sees Rae emerge from her shackles as a transformed character of sweetness and light ready for the love of a good man, suggests all women need to help them back on-the-rails is a bit of patriarchal torture. Meanwhile, Brewer lets the camera leer over every inch of Ricci’s barely-clothed body like he’s shooting a 70s soft-core porn movie, whilst asking the audience to be shocked by her demonic sexuality.

Ricci’s sex doll look - all saucer eyes, size 0 waist, and Lara Croft breasts - only adds to the ludicrousness. Her portrayal of Rae’s mental turmoil amounts to writhing around her captor’s floor as if in the final throes of orgasm. When Ricci finally gets given some clothes and is required to act the good girl, she looks as lost as the audience feel. As her scarred boyfriend, Timberlake adds another nail to the coffin of his stalled acting career with a display of sniveling overacting more suited to a teen soap than the big screen. Only Jackson, well used to such B-movie hokum after Snakes on A Plane, manages to inject some humanity into proceedings, despite being lumbered with a script which makes Lazarus nothing more than the brimstone-and-fire spouting Deep South cliché.

The only remotely redeeming factor of this painful oddity is Brewer’s use of classic Memphis blues to complement the character’s miserable soul-searching – infused with genuine soul and passion, the music only serve to highlight the emotional and moral emptiness of the rest of the production.