Talk to Me
I lived in Washington, D.C., for five years and had never heard of Petey Greene before this film came out. Granted, I lived there long after his passing, but such an iconic historical figure for the city should have at least been on my radar.
That's the setback faced by Talk to Me before the picture even gets started. That's also where the immensely talented and underrated Don Cheadle takes over, captivating your attention with what I can only assume is a dead-on interpretation of Greene. Even if it isn't, Cheadle cranks up the kind of magnetism you might not expect from an actor who typically plays calm and collected types.
Talk to Me winds up being less about Petey Greene and more about the relationship between Greene and Dewey Hughes, WOL-AM's gutsy program director who predicted how Greene could connect with the city's large African-American population and risked his career to get him on the air. In fact, the film winds up leaning toward Hughes in terms of coverage, which becomes less surprising upon learning that co-screenwriter Michael Genet is Hughes' son. British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor goes toe-to-toe with Cheadle and holds his own as Hughes in what essentially amounts to the film's lead role.
Though the each man's story seems to be struggling for dominance at times, Greene's funny, irreverent personality and the brotherly love story between these two men, whose relationship ultimately had vastly different effects on each other's lives, supersedes the limited appeal of the film's subject matter and makes for a universally entertaining picture.