Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Based on his experiences of working in telemarketing. Boots Riley’s debut feature is a scrappy but scathing and surreal attack on capitalism and false consciousness that bristles with anger. The satire can sometimes be a bit on-the-nose and the introduction of increasingly more absurd developments in the last reel threaten to derail it but Riley holds it all together and Sorry to Bother You is never less than bitingly funny.

Set in a parallel present day version of Oakland, California it follows the exploits of the down-on-his-luck Cassius “Cash” Green (LaKeith Stansfield) who lives in his uncle Sergio (Terry Crews)’s garage with his artist girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson). Behind in the rent, Cash takes a job as a telemarketer at RegalView and initially struggles to make any sale. Only when veteran marketer Langston (Danny Glover) tells him about his “white voice”, a non-threatening and non-specific mode of communication that yields results (his “white voice” is provided by David Cross) does Cash start to exceed expectations. While some of his co-workers form a union to fight against the shoddy working practices at RegalView, Cash is promoted to elite “Power Caller” and allowed access to the higher floors of the building where he starts to realis eth horrible truth about RegalView – they’re affiliated with the recruitment agency WorryFree who are providing what amounts to slave labour to their clients. A meeting with WorryFree CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) reveals even more horrific truths – Lift has developed a whole new species, half-horse, half-human hybrids he calls “equisapiens” that he believes will work harder, longer and cheaper than real humans. Appalled, Cash sets out to expose Lift, unaware that he’s started going through the transformation into an “equisapien” himself…

Riley had emerged as the front man for politically charged rap collective The Coup so it’s hardly a surprise that when he moved into film it would be with a film that tackles social issues, taking aim at the evils of capitalism while also highlighting the plight of Oakland’s predominantly black poorer residents. It works best when Riley is subtly getting under out skin in the first two thirds, never laying the satire on with a trowel as is too often the case, trusting his audience to get his point without having to spell it out to us. It’s less successful perhaps in its latter stages when the introduction of the “equisapiens” takes us a step too far from the real world and the satire becomes blunter but one certainly can’t fault its ambition.

The title has two meanings – it’s a phrase often used by telemarketers when someone picks up the phone but also refers to the fact that Riley is indeed trying to bother us with uncomfortable truths that we’d often rather not have to deal with. He skilfully raises these issues with shots like Cash’s drive through the streets of the poor neighbourhood he lives in, suddenly and jarringly finding himself passing the gleaming glass and steel edifices of the business district, a clever almost subliminal cut that underlines the disparities in Oakland – and by extension American – society. It’s that sort of restraint and subtlety that makes the film so effective.

It’s not just the big issues that Riley takes aim at, he also prods at the everyday annoyances of life. When Cash takes up his job as a telemarketer his first “victims” are invariably busy doing other things (eating dinner, having sex) when he literally drops in on them with his calls, physically transferring briefly into their private spaces to “bother” them. Later, Cash is given an absurdly long security number to use in the lift that carries him to the elite floor of RegalView, a seemingly elevator that seems to know more about his life than it has any right to know (“I hope you have not masturbated today. We need you sharp and ready to go.”)

In a world of increasing corporate exploitation Sorry to Bother You felt timely when it was released in 2018 and feels more so with every passing day. Riley cannily avoids targeting the obvious (there’s no mention of the Trump administration for example – after all the script was written under Obama’s presidency) taking aim instead at a system that consistently lets down the poor and dispossessed no matter who is running it. Individual leaders aren’t the problem for Riley, it’s the entire capitalist system itself, a system, that chews up the working class, turns them into disposable commodities and spits them out again when it’s done with them.

When tackling racism Riley again does so without the bullhorn lecturing that scuppers many such attempts. The very fact that Cash is forced to find his “white voice” (he does it so well he later seems to forget that he’s doing it at all) literally speaks volumes and Cash being introduced to Lift with the words “he’s friendly” verbalises white middle class America’s fear of its black neighbours in just two words. Even the seemingly more aware Detroit has her own “white voice” (Lily James) that she uses to impress her audience at her performance art gig and the film suggests that Cash’s acceptance of his “white voice” will bring him nothing but heartache – he (briefly) loses Detroit, turns his back on his friends and is goaded by a largely white crowd into performing a rap that mainly consists of him repeating the most pernicious of racial epithets over and over again.

LaKeith Stanfield (from The Purge: Anarchy (2014), Selma (2014), Straight Outta Compton (2015) and Get Out (2017)) is great as the often bewildered Cash, an easily identifiable everyman who flits with “the system” and is almost destroyed by it. That the film works half as well as it does is thanks in no small part to Stansfield’s very likeable and natural performance. Thompson (also seen in Selma but also in Dear White People (2014), Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and Annihilation (2018)) and her outrageous collection of earrings transcends what could have been a bog-standard girlfriend/enabler role and makes Detroit a very funny and immensely relatable character in her own right. Omari Hardwick makes an eyepatch almost supernaturally cool as the mysterious Mr _______, Armie Hammer is marvellously slimy as the venal CEO and it’s always a huge pleasure to spend time in the company of the great Danny Glover who proves, yet again, that he’ll never be too old for this shit…

The late diversion into full-blown absurdist fantasy threatens to distract away from the film’s multi-pronged satire. The “equisapiens”, genetically engineered workhorses – literally – are a wonderfully unexpected turn into left field but it’s step to far away from the real(ish) world of the rest of the film and it tends to undermine the good work Riley did earlier in the film. But against the odds he keeps it on track and again his ambition is extraordinary.

Sorry to Bother You remains a funny (at one point Cash watches a corporate video directed by one “Michel Dongry”), committed and angry film that fizzes with energy and wit. It’s rare for an American film to be so unashamedly socialist in its views (Riley identifies as a communist) and for it to then go on to be so successful at the box office. It may lose its way towards the end but while it’s on the right track it’s a dizzying, hilarious and thought-provoking ride. Whatever Riley chooses to do next (in the COVID-19 wracked summer of 2020 he announced a television series, I’m a Virgo, starring Jharrel Jerome) is bound to be provocative, hilarious and intriguing.

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