Moses Stanton is a black grocer sitting in his banker’s office applying for a second mortgage. Yes, he always paid his mortgage on time, but he’s considered too generous for giving groceries to the poor. The banker is a friendly white man proffering sound business advice that might lead Moses to the promised land of profitability. Until he glimpses that shore, no second mortgage.
So begins Everyday Black Man, and in the light of the subprime catastrophe, the plot hinge creaks a little. It all sounds almost quaint, so last centurya banker concerned with the solvency of someone applying for a loan. And that, if there are problems with writer-director Carmen Madden’s film, is a point that stands out. Even the black nationalist rhetoric spouted by the Black Muslim who wants to join Moses in a business partnership seems a little Do the Right Thing. Despite a 21st-century sounding reference to budget cuts at the local high school, Everyday Black Man seems like a screenplay written in the early ‘90s during the period when significant African-American filmmaking appeared poised to seize a corner of Hollywood.
Regardless, Everyday Black Man is a story of some merit acted out by a solid cast, headed by the expressive Henry Brown (of the Lethal Weapon franchise) as Moses and aided by Tessa Thompson (“Grey’s Anatomy”) as his sweetly disposed daughter Claire. There are bad deals going down in the hood and not everyone is what he seems. Suggestion: Add 1990 or even 2000 at the film’s onset and the sense of time warp would be solved.
Everyday Black Man, which won a number of awards on the film festival circuit, is out on DVD.
