Early on in All Day and a Night, while Jahkor Lincoln (Ashton Sanders) is standing trial for double homicide his voiceover narration notes that when people ask why he did it they only want easy answers. The truth, it is suggested, is much more complicated. And yet it isn’t really. As the film expands on Jahkor’s life, illustrating his troubled upbringing and the culture of gangs and violence he grew up around, it really isn’t that difficult to answer. Yet Joe Robert Cole, a screenwriter of Black Panther and The People v. O.J. Simpson, clearly wants to have a conversation about the subject of gang violence in impoverished black neighbourhoods in the U.S., and the repetition of patterns of criminality from one generation to the next. It’s a conversation that should be had, but this is a film that doesn’t do it justice.
Beginning with Jahkor’s shocking murder of a young couple in front of their daughter and subsequent life sentence, the film explores his background to try and account for how he got here, using the framing device of his interment, though rarely connecting elements of his prison life to his experiences before. A childhood marked by abuse and neglect by his drug addict father (Jeffrey Wright) and emotional instability by his well-intentioned mother (Kelly Jenrette) that is keen to avoid the typical movie trappings of a kid set on the right path early on to be flung out of it by tragic elements beyond his control. On the contrary, his proclivity towards crime is almost natural, as though it were a predestined path before he was born. His attempts to break free, to become a rapper or distance himself from his toxic family life and environment never enact a permanent change. This is the point Cole is making, often through Jahkor’s voiceover comments, that a life of crime is inescapable in the system and circumstances he was born into. But there’s rarely a sharp illustration of this theme, or an effective critique as to why this status quo continues to exist. Just a touch of anger and pessimistic resignation.
And that’s unfortunate because the movie clearly has ambitions and is interested in truly exploring the gray areas of the issue. It is compelled by the periphery of Jahkor’s actions and associations: his girlfriend Shantaye (Shakira Ja’nai Paye) and their young son, his childhood friend TQ (Isaiah John), and of course his mother -who always comes back appealing to him despite his continued recklessness. We feel for her, because we so often don’t for Jahkor, who isn’t fleshed out enough to engage the audience relatably. And because of that opposition the film has to easily understanding its subject, it’s very difficult to understand or sympathize with Jahkor a lot of the time. In fact, far from his life and actions being engineered by factors out of his control, the film often shows he has a choice -counter-intuitive to the systemic critique All Day and a Night is going for.
One thing that sets this movie apart from others like it is the near total absence of white characters. There’s no scene of police brutality or explicit racism levied against Jahkor, and I do appreciate that relative freshness that bluntly says it’s no one white aggressor that is the problem but a culture and structure of white supremacy. The movie also does a great job subtly drawing attention to the disproportionately ethnic population of prisons and the lack of sufficient rehabilitation efforts for felons of colour. But that system is hardly commented on either. One of the starkest and most curious notes is that Jahkor is in prison with his father, where the two can work to mend their relationship. Regarding the theme of criminal inheritance, it’s on the nose to the degree I assumed when he first appeared behind Jahkor in the prison yard he was an apparition or hallucination -which would have been a more creative approach. Nonetheless, robbed of his awful hair extensions and allowed to be halfway humbled, the character here plays better to Wrights’ strengths, and the scenes between father and son behind bars are fittingly evocative, if not as revealing as they’d like to be.
All Day a Night is a movie that is not content with being clear-cut, fearing that would water down the message, but it isn’t capable of conveying the complexity of its themes much either. The result is a movie stuck in a vague limbo, wanting to say something important, but unable to articulate it in a coherent way; pointing to inequities and behavioural patterns borne out of generations of systemic suppression, but not commenting or offering enlightenment in any way on them. Interestingly in its better moments, it’s reminiscent of another movie that addressed such themes as growing up in neglect and a structure that predetermines an inclination towards violence, that also starred Ashton Sanders: Moonlight -which had a much firmer grasp on these themes. Sanders is good, so is Wright, and Jenrette is downright terrific in a few standout moments. But apart from such moments, this isn’t a movie that posits anything substantive -which sucks in a time when its points of interest have never been in greater need of dissection.
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