Even diehard fans of the tireless Tyler Perry sometimes wish he’d slow down a bit to focus on quality over quantity. But Netflix feature “Straw” has a cultural pulse-taking urgency that lifts it above his usual run of comedies and melodramatic potboilers, flawed as it is. Starring Taraji P. Henson as a single mother loaded with more crises than a woman can bear in one day — resulting in a hostage situation à la “Dog Day Afternoon” — “Straw” sports its writer-director-producer’s familiar faults.
It’s overloaded with plot contrivance, histrionics and on-the-nose messaging, piling on too much of everything. Yet what breaks the camel’s back for this put-upon heroine is an accumulated rage that feels particularly tuned to our political moment, when to many Americans it seems societal institutions have ceased to even pretend they serve any citizens below a narrow economic elite. So as it plays out, her meltdown has a cathartic power that charges past Perry’s clumsier dramaturgical impulses. “Straw” is too messy to be “good,” exactly — but it has a bitter relevancy, and it works.
Within 20 minutes, Janiyah (Henson) arrives at the requisite why-hast-thou-forsaken-me-God shot, screaming at the camera overhead. In a brief span since waking, just about every bad thing possible has happened to her: She’s suffered sundry petty abuses, been the victim of a road-rage accident, had her car impounded, lost a desperately-needed supermarket job, seen asthmatic daughter Aria (Gabby Jackson) taken away by Child Services and been evicted from their dingy apartment for tardy rent. Crawling back to an unsympathetic boss (Glynn Turman) for the paycheck she’s still owed, she lands in the middle of an armed hold-up ending in two fatalities — which isn’t really her fault, but it sure looks that way to cops.
By now rattled past the point of rationality, she returns to a bank she’d visited earlier, convinced that if she can just cash her check, the world will be right again. But her very bad luck holds: Employees there assume from Janiyah’s hysterical demeanor (and the robbers’ handgun she’s held onto) that this, too, is a stick-up. In quick succession, the entrance gets locked, a silent alarm triggered and umpteen squad cars pull up with sirens screaming in the strip mall parking lot outside. Before she’s had time to clarify matters, a TV monitor in the bank lobby shows live news reportage, casting her as the alleged perpetrator of a hostage crisis the whole city is watching unfold.
This all occurs in such hectic fashion that a half-hour hasn’t passed before you fear “Straw” already maxxing out its quota of yelling, tears and panic. That places an onerous burden on Henson, doing her considerable best trying to sustain a role whose Job-like travails crank the distress level to 11 too soon. There’s also a large cast of supporting characters, many called upon to strike shrill notes of hostility. With little in the way of friends or family she can count on, Janiyah has few allies in her life. When she’s suddenly viewed as a dangerous criminal, the only observers willing to see past that snap judgment are branch manager Nicole (Sherri Shepherd) and Det. Raymond (Teyana Taylor), a policewoman who becomes the chief negotiator.
Everyone else assumes the worst of her, notably an ill-tempered teller (Ashley Versher) who undermines efforts at a peaceful resolution, then the leader (Derek Phillips) of FBI forces, who’s intent on a guns-blazing finish. Adding more anxiety is the belief that Janiyah carries a bomb, when in fact the thing with flashing lights and beeping sounds in her daypack is a child’s school project. Another headache for the authorities is that a camera phone inside the bank captures her distraught monologue explaining what got her here — which gets broadcast on local TV, drawing a crowd of protestors outside. (That development underlines the fact-based “Dog Day” from 50 years ago as a likely inspiration.)
“Straw” is hardly Perry at his most indulgent — last year’s sudsy thriller “Divorce in the Black” was 143 minutes long — yet he still apparently can’t resist shoehorning in every idea that comes to mind. That makes the film seem overwrought early on, before it settles somewhat into the drawn-out stalemate at the bank. Then it upsets the narrative scales again at the end, first with a major twist invalidating much of what we’ve previously seen, then a deliberately deceptive action sequence. These conceits might work in a different screenplay, but they feel wildly gratuitous in one already so cluttered with hand-wringing injustices and mortal peril.
Nonetheless, “Straw” succeeds overall because we don’t necessarily need to find Janiyah’s near-ridiculous predicament fully credible; it can be accepted as an exaggerated encapsulation of the pressure cooker people like her inhabit every single day. She’s routinely dismissed as lazy, dishonest or just bad for not rising above her lot … never mind that she’s working two minimum-wage jobs sans benefits, the lack of health insurance meaning she can’t afford all the medicine her daughter needs. Poverty’s perpetual debt cycle means she can’t improve their lives by returning to nursing school, either.
As elderly bank customer-cum-hostage Isabella (Diva Tyler) notes, “People don’t know how expensive it is to be poor.” When told yet again that she should just suck it up somehow, Janiyah herself laments, “Black women always have something to get over.” “Straw” may be hyperbolic and heavy-handed, but it still packs punch enough as a challenge from the “have-nots” to the “haves”: You try living this way, and see how easy it is to better yourself.
Shot in Georgia as usual, Perry’s latest is one of his best-crafted in tech and design terms, with particularly solid work from cinematographer Justyn Moro and editor Nick Coker. His script may go over the top, and a generally adept cast (which also includes prominent parts for Sinbad, Rockmond Dunbar, Shalet Monique and others) copes variably with its excesses. Finally, though, the director holds his top-heavy premise together just well enough to arrive at an impact no less effective for being characteristically unsubtle.
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