TYLER PERRY'S 'DUPLICITY' MIGHT BE TYLER PERRY AT HIS MOST TYLER PERRY

Hollywood has never known a star quite like Tyler Perry. The formula he's mastered—with a secret sauce no one else can seem to crack—has made Perry one of the most powerful people in the industry. It’s also made him synonymous with unintentional cringe and surprisingly low budget content for a man worth over a billion dollars, who owns a studio lot that could rival Universal’s, and who's nabbed lucrative streaming deals with both Amazon and Netflix.

To watch a Tyler Perry film—I mean, really watch it—almost feels like a game. Spot the out-of-focus camera work. Clock the Dollar General grade wigs. Drink every time there's an unearned dramatic outburst-turned-speech. Drink twice if that speech is about how a woman can be a better woman to her man.

Peyton Fulford/The New York Times/Redux

But the real star of the show is Perry's flair for over-the-top plot twists that will have you screaming increasingly bizarre questions at your own tv screen. Questions like: How does a film about police brutality turn into a film about lying, cheating, no good men? Is CPR the proper treatment for three gunshot wounds to the chest? Why are a news anchor and a segment producer involved in a police investigation? How does a beat cop afford a multi-million dollar mansion? How does a lawyer who's chained up, tied to an anchor, and tossed into a nondescript body of water break free in mere seconds? Can a flare gun shoot three people before either of them can react? When did this movie become this movie??

*SPOILERS FOR DUPLICITY FROM THIS POINT*

I'm Not Just Your Friend, I'm Your Lawyer.

Enter Tyler Perry's Duplicity, the latest from a man who has never—will never—be accused of being subtle. In real life, real people rarely say what they mean or what they're thinking out loud. But in a Perry script, sprinkled with gems like, "I am so damn tired of these white officers killing us", people are constantly saying exactly what they're thinking, feeling, doing, going to do, going to think, going to feel. Little of it is recognizable as human behavior. And there are so many circular conversations that halfway through, I felt dizzy. Yet, I was intrigued enough to push through to the end and wait for something, anything of plot importance to be revealed.

I'm still waiting.

Duplicity is (or should have been) the story of the shooting of an unarmed black man and the events that follow. At the movie’s center are two Strong Black Women (TM), formidable attorney Marley Wells (played by The Vampire Diaries' Kat Graham) and semi-famous news anchor Fela Blackburn (played by Batwoman star, Meagan Tandy), who become bound by the police slaying of the former’s "big brother" and latter’s husband, Rodney (played by Joshua Adeyeye), an unarmed man jogging in an affluent neighborhood. In partnership with her boyfriend, Tony (played by Tyler Lepley), a former police officer turned private investigator, Marley is confronted with layers on layers (on layers) of deception and dangerous secrets.

The situation goes down exactly how you'd expect: civil unrest among local residents, administrative leave for the involved officer, pending a settlement, and a political case for the mayor’s office to sort through before the whole town boils over.

To be fair, the film isn’t necessarily trying to frame its events as complicated. But a lack of focus does mean a good deal of wheel-spinning in the process of unraveling its mystery—none of which is actually uncovered through Marley’s sleuthing, but because information seems to drop into people’s laps from sources so far off-screen I'd need a golf cart to go find them.

What's most interesting is just when the movie feels like it should be wrapping up, it becomes a totally different movie. The main story wraps. A settlement of 15 million dollars is reached between "the state" and the family of the victim. Yet, 40 minutes of runtime remain.

It's suddenly revealed that Rodney, the victim, has been secretly deep in financial debt (a tidbit that never actually matters to the plot). It's also revealed that the white cop who shot Rodney has a shady military past that, somehow, on the record, includes racial slurs (also not super relevant to the plot). Marley gets kidnapped. And we're suddenly introduced to two new characters at a time when credits should definitely be rolling—a white woman who had an affair with Rodney, and a black woman who introduces herself as "I'm Jennifer, the wife of the racist." (Is Perry really insinuating that a white man married to a person of color can't have racial blindspots?)

This ragtag crew of the most boring criminal cohort imaginable let Marley go in exchange for helping them clean up white cop's racist reputation. And during the exchange, Marley gets the address to a mysterious mansion..somehow. Marley gets kidnapped again, knocked out, thrown on a boat where a rent-a-cop on his own boat shows up just as crimes are criming. Then fifteen strait minutes of exposition hold our hands through the films conclusion.

And if that plot sounds overly complicated, that’s because it is. And for no good reason as Duplicity manages to be two (or three or four) movies in one, and not one of them is fully developed.

He Was My Husband!

Now, let's talk about the characters as this is a cast of characters you've definitely seen before. Kat Graham stars as the determined attorney hellbent on getting to the bottom of the mystery that claimed the life of her best friend’s husband. There's Marley’s seemingly "perfect" boyfriend, Tony, a private investigator who’s also looking into the shooting. (And, of course, there’s more to him than meets the eye.) There's Kevin, one of the officers involved in the tragic incident, who just happens to be friends with Tony and Marley. And there's the action seeking white Rookie, a little too eager for crimes to happen. There’s nothing particularly surprising about these characters except what Perry decides to do with them.

For Meagan Tandy and Kat Graham, there were high stakes to stepping into characters whose central identities revolve around grief, manipulation, and more, and both actors were up for the challenge. But the hardest job of the film definitely goes to Tandy as Fela. She cries, she screams, she drops to her knees. She squeals "he was my husband!" at least a dozen times. And at this point, Perry seems contractually obligated to use the phrase "I'm mad as hell!" at least once, as the line has seemingly been his unofficial catchphrase since the stage version of Diary of Mad Black Woman. And Fela is mad as hell, and mad as hell, and mad as hellllllll.

And while most of the acting is solid enough, the writing is so overwrought, I can't imagine it was easy for any of these performers to get those lines out with a straight face.

I Need to Get Answers.

Love it or leave it, Tyler Perry has been the dominant manufacturer of popular Black images for at least two decades. All the more troubling when Perry incorporates ideas into his work that he himself does not appear to fully understand—political brutality, racial blindspots, colorism, domestic abuse, romance, relationships, the law—resulting in projects that can easily dip into moralism and stereotypes.

And that misguidance is precisely what make this film so frustrating. To be clear, I don’t think police shootings should be off-limits in fictionalized stories. (Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give is both brutal and brilliant. And it was written for children). But they at least need to say something about the pervasive culture of police violence. And this film didn’t actually manage to say anything. And because the violence in question is so unnecessary to the thriller-suspense of it all, the movie could’ve definitely existed without it. In the end, this is just another Perry film where the moral of the story is black men suck.

There's a lot to love about Tyler Perry. Every Black actress who's nabbed a starring role from the studio magnate has credited Perry for the highest payday of their careers. (Which gave them car-blanche to negotiate higher paydays down the road.) So whether you love, hate, hate to love, or love to hate his work, Perry is a great American success story. And he's one of few Black creators (or creators period) who's truly free to make whatever the hell he wants. And while his films are now an ultra predictable smorgasbord of Blackisms, I'll be here for every one, waiting for the day Perry wants to make something good.

2/5 ★: The bar is in the basement.