Their meeting, like the one with Lomax, initiates another trajectory for Muddy: she stays home looking woeful in her apron while he’s on the road and sleeping with multiple women. Here his life is shaped as still more iconic moments: he recruits harmonica player Little Walter (Columbus Short) by challenging him to play with him on a street corner, he sings on a sidewalk to attract the attention of his wife to be, Geneva (Gabrielle Union), who leans out her apartment window to flirt (“You trouble, you know that?”) and invite him inside. That meeting, over-explains narrator Dixon, leads Muddy to think his voice is “too big for that shack,” as Muddy walks off down literal roads and railroad tracks, winding his way to the big city (and not mentioning that he’d already been to St. When he plays it back, Muddy looks perplexed: “Feel like I’m meetin’ myself for the first time,” he mumbles. The 1941 moment looks iconic: Muddy plays his guitar and wails a bit, while chickens pick through dirt near his shack and Lomax leans into his recording machine, stowed in his car trunk, and smiles enthusiastically. Muddy’s trek to Chicago from Mississippi is initiated here by an encounter with Alan Lomax (Tony Bentley). The universe for this mattering is broadly sketched. This means, per those same conventions, that no matter how crowded the movie becomes with potential protagonists and storylines - and it does become very crowded - he provides an engaging interesting throughline, a figure whose fate seems to matter, if only by sheer force of will. It helps Cadillac Records that the primary figure in this early family configuration is Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), blessed as he is with charisma and an abiding self-confidence. That means, per movie conventions, they will fight and make up, nurture and betray, and succeed and fail as a unit that is never entirely convinced of their unity. With such notable portrayals, the film's formulaic flaws are all forgiven, and the audience will walk out humming the tunes.“They was a family now,” observes Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer) of the artists who form the bluesy, Chicago-based Headhunters in 1947. Even Knowles, looking spot-on as the frosted-haired James, proves she has some acting chops hidden beneath that gorgeous, impenetrable persona. Eamonn Walker is a commanding scene-stealer as scary, sexy, gravelly voiced bluesman Howlin' Wolf Columbus Short should propel himself into his first leading role after his remarkable turn as Waters' protégé Little Walter and Def is hilariously perfect as charismatic, duck-walking Berry. Wright nails every role he's in, and his Muddy - the bluesmen who "sings about pain but doesn't live it" - is just one more example of why he's one of the most versatile actors working today. Led by Brody and Wright, the cast is truly superb (the only weak link is Cedric the Entertainer's underwhelming narration). The soundtrack includes killer renditions of classics like "At Last," "Mannish Boy," "Maybelline," "Smokestack Lightning," and "No Particular Place to Go." But despite director Darnell Martin's creative liberties (in real life, Chess had a brother named Phil, and the Chess lineup included other key players who are completely missing from the film, most notably Bo Diddley), a collection of standout performances transforms a standard genre timeline of milestones into a fast, funny, and even thrilling ride down musical lane. As a story, Cadillac Records is as melodramatic as every other rags-to-riches, Behind the Music tale of tortured musicians.
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