Mark Reviews Movies: 88

88, Samuel Goldwyn Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 16, 2023

Writer/director Eromose's political thriller 88 revolves around a conspiracy that makes so little ideological sense that it almost circles back to become plausible. We live in times of such surprising, disappointing, and frightening politics, and this story, which focuses on the unholy marriage of money and political campaigns, does indeed surprise in ways that would disappoint and frighten if its underlying thesis somehow ever proved correct. In the current political landscape of misinformation and attempts to normalize terrible actions or ideas and intentional or accidental alliances with the darkest corners of extremist ideology, let's assume that just about anything, no matter how strange or unlikely it may seem on the surface, is at least some kind of possibility.

When Eromose's screenplay tries to rationalize the possibility of this movie's conspiracy, it's at its most challenging and compelling. The rest of the story, unfortunately, doesn't quite measure up to the boldness of its central hypothesis.

The figure at the center of it all is one Harold Roundtree (Orlando Jones), a Black businessman and rising politician whose story is an inspiring one—on the surface, of course, because little is as it seems here. He grew up poor in the South, but through hard work and perseverance and a lot of opportunities from various sources, Roundtree earned a post-graduate degree in business, ran a financial institution until the 2008 economic collapse, escaped the crisis with his personal wealth intact, and is now one of the leading candidates for the Presidential primaries in the Democratic Party.

Roundtree remains mostly in the background of this story, both as an idea for others to rally behind and as a savvy politician in clips from a recent interview with TV talk show host (played by William Fichtner). The interviewer becomes increasingly hostile as the segment proceeds throughout the story, as Roundtree evades and dances around topics that might otherwise seem important given his background, his political party, and the state of the country from the filmmaker's outlook.

The protagonist, though, is Femi Jackson (Brandon Victor Dixon), a math nerd and numbers whiz who has recently been hired to keep track of the fundraising efforts of a Super PAC supporting Roundtree's campaign. A brief animation explains the nature of Super PACs, the political non-profits that can funnel money to them, and how an infamous Supreme Court ruling made all of this, as well as essentially anonymous and limitless donations to political campaigns, possible, and all of this feels like a kind of nostalgic throwback to the time when that ruling and the whole game were the talk of the news and campaign cycles. It's a reminder how the controversial can become the new norm in just over a decade.

Anyway, Femi's a big fan of Roundtree, listening to his speeches while he exercises in the garage and seeing the man as an inspiration at his darkest hour. Femi is a recovering alcoholic, getting a second chance with his job at the PAC and with his pregnant wife Maria (Naturi Naughton), whose politics lean further left than her husband's and the ones belonging to his new idol. The movie never quite sees her as a character, unfortunately, because she exists more as an alternative to Femi's practicality and Roundtree's attempts to appeal to the masses, but her speeches are never boring, for whatever that's worth and until the plot needs her in the background to get to the heart of what's happening with Roundtree and his funding.

That's the hook of the plot, as Femi discovers a strange anomaly in the majority of donations to the non-profit organizations that ultimately contribute to the PAC. They're all some kind of permutation of the eponymous number, and when he calls upon his friend and crack legal investigator Ira Goldstein (Thomas Sadoski) to look into those contributions, his buddy is already a step ahead just by the number.

There's something going on here that involves neo-Nazis, white supremacists, nationalists, or whatever such scummy losers call themselves to hide the truth of their beliefs. If that's the case, how and why are they contributing money, even indirectly, to the campaign of a Black politician whose platform and party alliances don't match that ideology?

That is the question, of course. One has to admire the political, historical, and cultural gymnastics Eromose performs to take something that might seem patently ridiculous on the surface and transform it into a theory that makes at least some form of sense. There are the expected scenes—of Femi mapping connections on a board, of people telling our protagonist to follow the money, of a secretive agent of some mysterious and unnamed government agency offering lots of exposition as sinister music plays in the background. The way in which Eromose incorporates history lessons, archival footage, and some information about the way these far right-wing groups operate in plain-enough sight, though, lends even the familiar a level of real-world tension and credibility.

The movie as a whole, though, is somewhat underwhelming, if only because of some assorted subplots (just about everything involving the wife and how the higher-ups at the PAC try to do damage control) and the anticlimactic nature of the third act. The mechanics and conspiracy of 88 don't fully come together, in other words, but considering the believability issues working against it from the start, what Eromose pulls off is somewhat impressive.

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