Redemption Road

LITTLE ROCK — Mario Van Peebles’ Redemption Road - which screened earlier this year at the Little Rock Film Festival under the title Black, White and Blues - is another one of those little movies about finding your way back from the wilderness.

It’s not wildly ambitious, but maybe anybody who has ever made a mistake and had to backtrack, maybe to temper their expectations, will be able to identify with it. It won’t win any Oscars, there are bits that might strike you as overly earnest and the ending might feel corny, but in the end the movie’s gritty enough to make its points and honest enough to earn your respect. And it’s suffused with American roots music.

It would be easy to parody though - if it were cast in a slightly higher budget key, with stars whose names mean more to the general public than Michael Clarke Duncan and Morgan Simpson, the skit shows might have a field day. Say it were Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman, respectively, in the roles of the broken-down white bluesman crippled by stage fright and alcoholism, and the mysterious stranger come to carry him home? Or Will Smith and Matt Damon?

Director Mario Van Peebles is playing chicken with a Hollywood trope called the “magical negro,” a hoary plot device where a spiritually elevated person of color - usually given to delivering wry and cryptic koans while smiling beatifically - teaches life lessons to the wretched, initially reluctant, white guy.

Still, Augy (Duncan, who has played the black savant before in The Green Mile) is eventually revealed as something other than a holy man (and his need for forgiveness is hinted at early on, when we learn he is following the 12 steps). While we may guess his secret long before the third act revelation, Duncan is a pleasant and charismatic performer who wears his character’s presumably hardwon wisdom lightly.

Augy’s mission is to track down would-be bluesman Jefferson Bailey (Morgan Simpson, who co-wrote the script with George Richards) and take him home to Huntsville, Ala., to collect an inheritance. And, coincidentally or not, to the girl (Kiele Sanchez) he left behind.

Augy finds Bailey (as he’s called) in Austin, Texas, an alcoholic wastrel crippled by stage fright, behind on his rent and in hock to a local thug (an enjoyably malevolent Luke Perry) who has just found out his debtor has also made him a cuckold.

Under the circumstances, it doesn’t take too much persuading to get Bailey in Augy’s beloved truck (Charlene) for the nearly 900-mile road trip, during which they gradually - and predictably - bond over live music (much of it supplied by the remarkable Tree Adams) in several colorful honky-tonks, before ending up at a blues club owned by Augy’s mentor, Santa (a meticulously underplayed performance by the reliable Tom Skerritt).

Things come together in a rush in the final act, and if things are wrapped up a little too neatly for some tastes, at least the debts seem paid in full. And happily ever after isn’t exactly a foregone conclusion, though maybe with some work, it’s possible.

The chief pleasure of the film is the way Duncan and Simpson inhabit their characters. Bailey seems in costume in his porkpie hat and bluesy facial hair, a shifty ungrounded sort unwilling to trust anyone, even himself.Meanwhile, Duncan’s Augy is a man entirely comfortable in his own incongruous skin - he’s a country music fan who dresses the part, which makes him look like some weird amalgamation of late career Barry Bonds and Clint Black.

Technically, the film looks much better than its relatively small budget might indicate - Van Peebles has always had a keen visual sense that runs toward cool colors and tight framings (the film at times feels like a country cousin to his first feature, 1991’s New Jack City). It was filmed in Tennessee, mostly around Nashville, but the rural locales so convincingly double for the actual places that I had to look it up.

Redemption Road is like an old familiar tune, an American standard, performed by a distinctive artist who knows it well enough to invert the chords and slur the phrasing. It’s like Miles Davis tackling “My Funny Valentine” - you know how it goes, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t surprised.