“Mr. Hardaway, are you ready?” the receptionist asks Mickey (Rashad Hunter) as the title card appears on screen, which occurs several minutes into the movie. Mickey sits for his first therapy session with Dr. Harden (Samuel Cofield Jr.), which plays out in the predictable cadence of clinician-patient familiarization — family history, personal goals, the next appointment date. The scene introduces a character retrospective of Mickey’s life and how he ended up in this situation, especially as the first previous minutes were of present-day Mickey committing a fatal criminal act.

Much like the discomfort of a therapy session, Mickey Hardaway requires direct confrontation with the development, aftermath, and even the uncertain fate of trauma. In south-central LA, Mickey’s passion for sketching is dampened by his abusive father Randall (David Chattam), who Mickey describes as a “typical, hard-nosed, blue-collar kinda guy.” Adamant in his belief that an artist’s life is unprofitable and unlivable, Randall tampers with Mickey’s chances to excel, which includes assaulting Mickey’s arts teacher and hiding a letter awarding Mickey a financial grant to attend an arts program. And as supportive as Mickey’s mother is in the absence of domestic tension, she is often powerless when Randall’s abuse escalates to a physical level.

The film is mostly comprised of expository dialogue, in which Mickey and a revolving cast of family members, teachers, and employers speak directly about their motives and concerns (which, admittedly, mostly sound like they are plucked from uninspired brochures from a guidance counselor’s office). Despite the weak lines, the camera sees each character at eye level. When Mickey finally stands up to his father, the argument feels so head-on that we can feel Randall’s off-screen presence raring to push back. Director Marcellus Cox has a keen eye for capturing people as they are, and, fortunately, Hunter’s talent to showcase a person’s resiliency and restraint in emotional turmoil makes his screen-time especially captivating. In an Instagram post, Cox lists Charlie Burnett’s Killer of Sheep as a top favorite, where the insulated community of mostly Black actors may be traced back to that film as an inspiration. The black and white filter has a storytelling purpose, where color flashes onto the screen when Mickey goes on his first date with Grace (Ashley Parchment), but for the other parts of the movie, it implies a sort of historical cycle that is often found in these stories: multigenerational trauma, subsisting as a creative person, and growing up as a Black man.

“I can talk about him until my hair turns gray, but nothing comes to fruition,” Mickey says to Dr. Harden in that first session about his father — a line that speaks louder by the end of the film. Mickey Hardaway is the full-length extension of a short film of the same name (also directed by Cox and starring Hunter), which seems like the natural course of action to do in further examining a character like Mickey, where the ramifications of lifelong suffering lie dormant until they aren’t. When kid-Mickey faces the whiplash between his father’s beatings and his mother promising peace in the house the next day, our window in seeing Mickey’s past and present collide allows for both understanding of his character and trepidation of what’s to come next. Though the film would have served best if there were less telling, I can tell that there is star power within Cox and Hunter, a collaboration I hope to see down the road.

Mickey Hardaway
2023
dir. Marcellus Cox
106 mins

Part of the 2023 Roxbury International Film Festival. Screened on Monday, 6/26 @ 7pm at the Hibernian Hall.