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‘88’ Review: Finding Hate in Numbers

In this new political thriller, a campaign finance manager uncovers a corrupt scheme.

Brandon Victor Dixon, wearing a zip-up sweatshirt, stands with his hands on his hips.

By Glenn Kenny

The political thriller “88,” written and directed (and produced and edited) by Eromose, feeds the audience a lot of information about today’s campaign finance laws and the ways they enable corruption. The film reaches its first boiling point 40 minutes in, and has further surprises in store.

Femi Jackson (Brandon Victor Dixon), the beleaguered financial manager of a super PAC backing the presidential candidate Harold Roundtree (Orlando Jones), uncovers a scheme linked to the movie’s title and that number’s connection to Nazis, both old school and new.

“It doesn’t matter where the money comes from if no one ever looks,” one snakelike character connected to the PAC tries to reassure another. But Femi is looking, and he makes increasingly disturbing discoveries along the way.

The tenor of this fervent picture comes through at Femi’s breakfast table early in the movie. Complaining that their young son Ola (Jeremiah King) wants a Wakanda-themed birthday party, Femi’s wife, Maria (Naturi Naughton), begins a trenchant denunciation of “Black Panther,” saying Wakanda is a fantasy for the benefit of the white corporate entities that finance it. Trying to de-escalate the debate, Femi wryly observes of the first “Panther” movie, “It made a billion dollars.” Maria shoots back, “For who?”

Eromose is a sharp thinker with a lot on his mind — and the inability to resist the urge to cram it all into a single movie. Sobriety, the inequities of banking practices, the “talk” Black parents have with their children about the police and, of course, capitalism — all these topics and more come under examination here. Combined with the increasingly “Parallax View”-like plot machinations, the result is dramatically wonky — and eccentrically thought-provoking.

88 Not rated. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. In theaters.

Review: Full of big ideas, the political thriller ‘88’ is too complex for its own good

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The political thriller “88” is a movie of ideas. Many, many ideas. It’s a film with a lot on its mind and a great deal to say about a host of vital topics. Taken piece by piece, this is not necessarily a bad thing. But overall, the approach proves too cluttered and diffused, especially if the goal — as it should be here — is to build real dramatic tension.

The picture — written, directed and edited by Nigerian British filmmaker Eromose ( 2010’s Idris Elba thriller “Legacy” ), who was also a producer — is absorbing and intriguing when it stays focused on its primary plot. This involves a conspiracy uncovered by Femi Jackson (Brandon Victor Dixon), the new financial director of L.A.-based One USA, a super PAC working to elect Democratic presidential hopeful Harold Roundtree ( Orlando Jones ). The question: Did One USA’s anxious head ( Amy Sloan ), eyes-on-the-prize deputy executive director (Michael J. Harney) and the unflappable, seemingly centrist Roundtree know about their PAC’s shadowy funding? The answer: It’s complicated.

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Femi, with the help of his investment blogger friend, Ira (Thomas Sadoski), unravels the sinister and alarming source of the bulk of One USA’s donations — and its arcane connection to the number 88. Meanwhile, Eromose packs in a blunt and expository series of history lessons covering Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, white supremacy, slavery, political corruption and hypocrisy, a multi-pronged look at racism, Nixon’s war on drugs and more, complete with an intrusive array of archival photos and footage. There’s even an animated sequence highlighting the 2010 Supreme Court decision (Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission) that infamously opened the floodgates for unlimited spending on political campaigns.

You may want to take notes.

Elsewhere, in an illustrative if dispensable subplot, Femi’s forthright, pregnant, bank employee wife, Maria (Naturi Naughton), is trying to secure a small-business loan for a former convicted drug dealer (Elimu Nelson), despite her company’s policy denying credit to ex-felons. Again, although this is a significant area to explore (as is Femi’s visually enhanced talk with young son Ola about encountering the police as a Black male), it leads to speechifying and narrative digression.

Femi and Ira’s at times chilling journey to nail the awful truth about One USA’s backing ahead of the presidential primaries is intercut with snippets of a moody TV interview between Roundtree and a Charlie Rose-like interviewer (William Fichtner) even-handedly grilling the smooth candidate. Though hardly a unique device, it’s the kind of effective, innate way to present information that the film should have used more often.

An elusive meeting between Femi and elderly, ailing author, conspiracy theorist and onetime German national Hans Muller (Jonathan Weir) is also vividly rendered.

It all leads to a final showdown in which Femi and Ira face off against Roundtree and his glad-handing campaign manager (Jon Tenney), during which a disturbingly plausible theory on the intersection of race, politics, money and power comes to light.

Ultimately, though, this provocative, hard-working film, which was executive produced by popular syndicated radio and TV talk show host Charlamagne Tha God, leaves us hanging in a way that feels more performative than stirring.

As Femi, Dixon (TV’s “Rent: Live” and “The Best Man: The Final Chapters”) is smart, earnest and committed but, at least as directed, lacks the level of energy and charisma needed to best anchor this sort of investigative thriller. His character is also saddled with a few traits — he’s a recovering alcoholic, often looks rumpled — that don’t add the dimension they aim to. That said, we still root for Femi to win the day.

The rest of the ensemble cast is largely strong, especially Sadoski, Jones, Naughton and Fichtner. In addition, the film does an admirable job in the diversity department.

At its best, “88” evokes elements of such 1970s paranoid thrillers as “The Parallax View,” “Three Days of the Condor” and even “All the President’s Men,” which posited that if you think our political system is sinister, you don’t know the half of it.

'88'

Not rated Running time: 2 hours, 2 minutes Playing: Starts Feb. 17, Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica; Regal Foothill Towne Center, Foothill Ranch

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‘88’ Review: Wonky Political Thriller Loses Its Way While Shining a Light on Dark Money

Charlamagne tha God produced the film, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival last year.

By Michael Nordine

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They can’t all be winners, especially when it comes to political dramas. For every classic like “All the President’s Men,” there’s a field of also-rans like “The Front Runner.” Writer-director Eromore’s “ 88 ” belongs firmly in the latter category, though it does deserve credit for being so focused on campaign-finance reform that it includes an animated PSA about the dangers of dark money and Citizens United. Despite counting Charlamagne tha God among its executive producers, however, the Tribeca 2022 alum seems destined to make as much impact as a presidential hopeful who drops out after the first primary.

As the candidate in question, Jones is seen almost entirely via a Charlie Rose-style interview with a journalist played by William Fichtner. He’s put in the hot seat about one subject after another, and does a convincing job of appearing like a smooth, viable contender — but never comes close to being a three-dimensional fictional character. Like so much else in “88,” he mostly serves as a mouthpiece for the film’s thematic underpinnings.

Others aren’t so subtle. One conversation between Femi and his sponsor (Kenneth Choi), who’s Korean American, quickly turns into a debate about which minority group has it worse; if that exchange isn’t on-the-nose enough, it’s interrupted by a phone call in which Femi is informed by his son’s principal that the boy has gotten in trouble for upsetting his classmates by talking about police brutality and Black Lives Matter. These are worthy topics indeed, but they’re also worthy of more nuanced depictions than they tend to receive here. With how explicit the film can be about its ideas — seemingly every other scene is little more than a mini-history lesson, with one of them even including the line “Have you seen ‘The Matrix’? White supremacy is all around us” — it’s difficult not to wonder why the filmmakers didn’t just opt for a documentary.

It’s tempting to spend a few more paragraphs detailing other subplots that exist solely to unsubtly touch on similar topics; in the interest of brevity, know that one concerns a convicted felon applying for a bank loan and the other is about Ola’s uncle, a white police officer, endeavoring to show the boy that “we aren’t all bad.” An interest in brevity would have likewise helped the film, whose two-hour runtime is thanks largely to these extraneous sequences. At its worst, it feels as interminable as election season.

Reviewed online, Feb. 15, 2023. In Tribeca Film Festival. Running time: 121 MIN.

Production: A Samuel Goldwyn Films release and presentation of a T & T Studios, BertMedia, Smada Media production. Producers: Hunter Arnold, Brandon Victor Dixon, Linda Rubin, Warren Adams. Executive producer: Charlamagne tha God.
Crew: Director, writer, editor: Eromose. Camera: Paul De Lumen. Music: Joe Kraemer.
With: Brandon Victor Dixon, Naturi Naughton, Orlando Jones, Thomas Sadoski, Michael J. Harney, Amy Sloan, Kelly McCreary, Jon Tenney, Kenneth Choi, William Fichtner.

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88 (II) (2015)

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Movie Review – 88 (2023)

February 16, 2023 by Robert Kojder

Written and Directed by Eromose. Starring Brandon Victor Dixon, Naturi Naughton, Orlando Jones, Thomas Sadoski, William Fichtner, Amy Sloan, Jonathan Camp, Kenneth Choi, Michael Harney, Shellye Broughton, Jeremiah King, Kelly McCreary, Ben Lewis, Anthony Lee Medina, Elimu Nelson, Pegah Rashti, Alesha Renee, Jon Tenney, Julian Wadham, Vinny Chhibber, and Jonathan Weir.

The Financial Director for a democratic super PAC behind a frontrunner presidential candidate investigates donations uncovering a conspiracy.

Give writer/director Eromose credit for an imaginative mind. 88 is filled with intrigue and crackpot conspiracy, yet ends without doing much with it. There’s not much resolution once the curtain is pulled back, and while it’s clear that those revelations are meant to leave one thinking after the credits roll, there are also just as many unanswered and confounding aspects.

While Eromose has clearly studied greats of the political thriller genre, aware of how to keep the narrative clean and engaging to follow with tension and mystery, the nuttier moments give the impression that he has played Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid games, as villains launch into exposition monologues (complete with cutaways to stock images) and important political figures blur the line between good and evil, with an anonymous group pulling the strings.

The issue is that Eromose doesn’t quite thread any of those intersecting plot threads into something fully rewarding. His screenplay is also bogged down by unnecessary family drama that only pads onto the running time while taking away from the more exciting zany aspects. However, occasional clips of an interview between a reporter played by William Fichtner and Democratic presidential candidate Harold Roundtree (Orlando Jones), pressing him on various topics, do give food for thought on whether or not he is aware that the majority of his campaign funding is coming from Nazis making donations coded to always add up to 88.

At the center of this investigation is Femi (Brandon Victor Dixon), the financial director for Harold’s super PAC, a numbers cruncher that first notices the suspicious numerical coincidences and alerts them to blogger Ira Goldstein (Thomas Sadoski), who reports back that the number dates back to the Nazis and is a means for them to communicate out in the open. If you think that’s a spoiler, 88 goes in so many different directions that it’s probably impossible to spoil everything that happens.

What can be said is that there are out-of-place but friendly bankers on who has racism worse between Blacks and Asians, an activist mother staunchly against the plot of the Black Panther movies, and who doesn’t like her son to be around his white uncle cop (until the story demands she has a change of heart, of course), and some bizarre visual flourishes that bring to mind the simulation (at one point one character asks another character if they have seen The Matrix ).

Then there are the moral questions regarding campaign money, who among the campaign runners are comfortable looking the other way when it comes to dirty money, where it comes from, and whether or not the US government truly controls it. 88 doesn’t wrestle with any of these questions emotionally or profoundly, so it’s mostly all intrigue and little substance, even if it is well-crafted and acted. It’s two hours of setup for something far more fascinating that will probably never get made.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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IMAGES

88 (Movie Review)
88 (2023)
'88' Movie Trailer (2023) Political Thriller First Look
Review: '88' (2023), starring Brandon Victor Dixon, Naturi Naughton
88 (2015) Movie Review
88 Movie Review

COMMENTS

‘88’ Review: Finding Hate in Numbers - The New York Times
Combined with the increasingly “Parallax View”-like plot machinations, the result is dramatically wonky — and eccentrically thought-provoking. 88. Not rated. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes ...
88 | Rotten Tomatoes
Audience Reviews for 88. There are no featured audience reviews for 88 at this time. See All Audience Reviews Movie & TV guides View All. Play Daily Tomato Movie Trivia . Awards Tour ...
'88' review: Too much of some good things - Los Angeles Times
By Gary Goldstein. Feb. 15, 2023 3:16 PM PT. The political thriller “88” is a movie of ideas. Many, many ideas. It’s a film with a lot on its mind and a great deal to say about a host of ...
88 (2022) - IMDb
88: Directed by Eromose. With Shellye Broughton, Gregory Butler, Jonathan Camp, Eric Casalini. The Financial Director for a democratic super PAC behind a frontrunner presidential candidate investigates donations uncovering a conspiracy.
88 - Movie Reviews | Rotten Tomatoes
88 Reviews. An attempt at a old-fashioned conspiracy thriller about race and dark money in politics in America, 88 is numbingly artless, less a credible drama than a collection of characters ...
Film Review: 88: A Political Thriller That Reflects the ...
88 Review. 88 (2022) Film Review from the 21st Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Eromose, starring Brandon Victor Dixon, Orlando Jones, Thomas Sadoski, Naturi Naughton ...
'88' Review: Wonky Political Thriller Loses Its Way - Variety
Camera: Paul De Lumen. Music: Joe Kraemer. With: Brandon Victor Dixon, Naturi Naughton, Orlando Jones, Thomas Sadoski, Michael J. Harney, Amy Sloan, Kelly McCreary, Jon Tenney, Kenneth Choi ...
88 - Metacritic
Original-Cin. Mar 23, 2023. While 88 has characters who have lots to say about the history of white supremacy, dark money in politics, and the delusion of fixing a corrupt system from within, this is a stiff, artless effort that barely makes the transition from explanatory journalism to fiction. Read More.
88 (2015) - 88 (2015) - User Reviews - IMDb
CelluloidDog 3 February 2015. Actual rating 3.3/10 mainly due to the ability of cast: Katherine Isabelle, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Ironsides and a special mention to director April Mullen. First, the movie is a cliché of the Hollywood (Canadawood) B cinema of girl goes gun crazy for revenge.
88 (2023) - Movie Review - Flickering Myth
88, 2023. Written and Directed by Eromose. Starring Brandon Victor Dixon, Naturi Naughton, Orlando Jones, Thomas Sadoski, William Fichtner, Amy Sloan, Jonathan Camp ...