The Butler

— It’s hard not to get caught up in “The Butler”. Even as it moves along feeling oddly like a made-for-TV movie with A-list actors, I was sucked into this crowded, ambitious film where two of the main characters happen to be witnesses to nearly every key civil rights event. While the father overhears candid white house discussions with a stoic face, the son is sitting at the lunch counter in Memphis, on the Freedom Rider bus firebombed in Alabama, and with Martin Luther King, Jr., just before he was assassinated. The sequence from one event to the next was so predictable that I wasn’t surprised by the next scene, but it didn’t matter, I was still moved by the struggle and by the validity of the viewpoints. I would have been happier if the film had ended when father and son both realize the pivotal role the other played in the struggle (at a rally against apartheid, of course), instead of tying things up too neatly, but that’s just me. It’s well worth the viewing and always worth remembering that, nearly 50 years after the March on Washington and King’s “I Have a Dream Speech”, the fight for equal rights continues.

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[2013. 132 min. Directed by Lee Daniels. Starring Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, John Cusack, and Cuba Gooding, Jr.]
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-15/news/41412198_1_lee-daniels-the-butler-wil-haygood