One actor who rarely seems to get his due is Kevin Costner. His career was derailed by the excesses of Waterworld and The Postman, and despite stellar work in titles like Thirteen Days and The Upside of Anger, his popularity has never risen to its former heights. That may finally be changing, with Oscar-quality work in Black or White as well as the upcoming project McFarland, USA. I’ve always liked the guy.
Black or White re-teams Costner with writer-director Mike Binder, for whom he made The Upside of Anger in 2005. Here, he’s a lawyer, just widowed, trying to raise his black granddaughter Eloise (Jillian Estell) without help from her other side of the family. Grandma Rowena (Octavia Spencer) finds this unacceptable, and takes him to court to give Eloise a proper family. The result is . . . Black or White.
The premise is beautifully established, with the fulcrum of the situation being Eloise’s absent father Reggie (André Holland), whose history with Elliot (Costner) is not warm and fuzzy. The tensions — and delights — within Rowena’s extended family are ably presented as being just as important and necessary to Eloise as her grandfather’s love and protection, even if he doesn’t see things that way. And the beauty of the script is that things develop and misfire and jump around just as they do in real life; it doesn’t feel like a movie script — except in the courtroom scenes.
The courtroom scenes play out in familiar movie fashion and are a bit too cloying for my taste, although the humor there is as welcome as it is throughout the rest of the story. They remind me, again, of how lawyers who are supposed to uphold the sanctity of the law do their best to undermine it for their own benefit. Although they are effective, there are too many courtroom scenes for this story; I think the film would achieve a better balance with less emphasis there.
Mike Binder’s film is also a tad sentimental in a key scene late in the story, but it is a most welcome sentiment. And while it is a story of racial conflict — or at least of a perceived racial conflict — there are no guns to be seen, no gangs or gang fights, no overt racial stereotypes. Just one particular situation, one story in which the outcome is clear from the beginning but one at which the various characters must eventually arrive on their own paths. A moral lesson may be there in plain sight, but it is delivered with great heart and humor, in very entertaining fashion. I highly recommend this movie; it is terrific. ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2. 16 February 2015.