Film review: They Cloned Tyrone (2023)

 

This is a straight-to-Netflix film that doesn't feel like it.  It has very impressive production values - it builds a satisfying urban world that is simultaneously gritty but also unreal, in that it adopts the indeterminate time-setting that has become almost standard these days (see everything from It Follows to Severance) where modern technology mixes with cathode ray tubes and 70's/80's vehicles and clothing - and three excellent central performances, from John Attack the Block/Star Wars Boyega (doing an impeccable American accent and providing the pathos), Jamie Foxx (his pimp could easily have been purely a cartoon character, but he manages to deliver archly artificial and very wordy lines naturalistically and also convey gravitas when called for), and (the new to me) Teyonah Parris (as the aspirational, Nancy Drew-loving prostitute who emerges as the real hero).  

The basic plot is a sort of Get Out/Westworld/The Truman Show/Robocop hybrid, where it turns out [SPOILER] an entire ghetto neighborhood (called "The Glen") is actually an experiment in social control, with key figures actually clones, and black "institutions" like church, an insanely popular fried chicken franchise (the ads for which recall the "I'd buy THAT for a dollar" commercials in Robocop), a grape beverage ("drank") and a hair-straightening cream the mechanisms for mind manipulation.  

The presence of white people with afros dotted around the Glen is a clue, and elevators down to a massive underground complex reveal the true scope of the conspiracy.  Half outrageous satire (some of the dialog, especially from Foxx's Slick Charles and Parris's Yo-Yo is truly exceptional) and half serious commentary, this film sprays its fire in all directions, with Boyega's Fontaine forced to assess his own role in his community's subjugation.  I would say it's John Carpenter-esque except that it's considerably less cheesy than his movies (The Thing being the notable exception).  While it flags at various points in its runtime, and one key scene (involving an effective Kiefer Sutherland as a predictably loathsome but also scary white villain) strains credulity to the limit, it deserves mention up there with anything by Jordan Poole.  A truly excellent little hybrid film.  Put it alongside Barbarian - not quite as stellar, but with more things to say (not all of them coherent, but all of them entertaining), and just as bold a mashup of genres.  All the more amazing, then, that it was written by the writer of the recent Space Jam remake...

Oh, and you have to wait for the closing credits for Tyrone to make his appearance...

Last thought: why "Olympia Black"?  Here's one theory.