Have you heard the conspiracy about all the growth hormones they put in our chickens to make them unbelievably huge? What about the scheme that white owned black hair conglomerates are using the creamy crack to control Black women? And the one about the Christianity plot to use Jesus’s teachings, specifically the turn the other cheek parable, to pacify the Black community? And I know you’ve heard that Tupac isn’t really dead. Take any conspiracy theory you’ve heard within the Black community, set it in a “Boyz in the Hood”-esque landscape with a funk-based hip hop soundtrack underneath and you have, They Cloned Tyrone. A pulp fiction, x-files mystery thriller written and directed by Juel Taylor. That isn’t to say that Taylor’s first major directorial outing is a clichéd clone, but the familiarity of the urban setting combined with the whodunit and sci-fi elements can’t be ignored.
The film begins by establishing where this story takes place they type of people the story is about. A couple of guys with locs in bomber jackets and Jordans are arguing about seeing Tupac working a regular 9-5 at the local grocery store while another is selling CDs out of the trunk of his car in front of the corner store. The action is interrupted by a kid looking for Fontaine. When they shoo him away with some choice words, the kid rides his bike past yellow grass and dilapidated houses with broken and boarded over windows. Unlike many of the roles he’s previously played, John Boyega is rough and unrecognizable as Fontaine. His hair points to the sky in free formed locs and his overgrown sideburns, mustache and beard frame the permanent scowl across his face. Boyega uses an indistinct ‘hood’ American accent with low heavy growl to his voice. When little Junebug finds Fontaine, we’re immediately led to dislike him. Fontaine has Junebug either dealing drugs or collecting money for him and at the same time we’re reminded of how young Junebug is as Fontaine snaps at him for talking his ear off scene from SpongeBob. While cruising in his lowrider with Junebug as a passenger, Fontaine slams his car into a corner dealer and steals his money and drugs right out of his pockets to sell for himself, savage.
Boyega is villain-like in his portrayal as Fontaine. Initially, he comes off as a man who’s stepped into to someone else’s clothes to play a stereo-typical drug dealer with seemingly no redeeming qualities. When Fontaine confronts the pimp, Slick Charles, about not paying for his drugs, Fontaine is menacing and quick to violence, trashing Slick Charles’s motel room as he hurls threats at him. Jamie Foxx plays quick-talking Slick Charles as a harmless, “bark but no bite” type, who cowers at Fontaine’s threats of violence. The contrast makes Fontaine’s actions seem like an overreaction to the situation. But as the story unfolds, we learn why Fontaine behavior plays like a caricature. When Fontaine is finished terrorizing Slick Charles, he gets in his car to leave, but is quickly gunned down in the parking lot. Another drug-dealer bites the dust.
But Fontaine jolts awake in his bed and goes about his day all over again like some “Groundhog Day” type loop. As if by program, he shows up at Slick Charles’s motel room demanding his cash again. But this time, Slick Charles is extra fast-talking and freaked out because according to him, Fontaine should be in the morgue. Fontaine doesn’t believe it until he’s convinced by Yo-Yo, one of Slick Charles’s mouthy sex-workers, who saw the murder go down. Fontaine forces Slick Charles and Yo-Yo to come with him to the house where Yo-Yo says his body was taken. The familiar ‘hood’ movie we thought we were watching breaks off into a sci-fi detective thriller whereby our haphazardly-formed “Scooby gang” investigates and uncovers a city-wide conspiracy to keep urban neighborhoods metaphorically asleep using surveillance, fried chicken, perms, and music as the numbing agents and pastors, pimps, hoes, gang bangers and drug dealers as the weapons.
John Boyega plays a straight man to Jamie Foxx’s quick-tongued, anxious, pimp cracking nonsense sayings and anecdotes to relieve the tension. Teyonnah Parris plays Yo-Yo as the out-spoken, observant, and quick-with-a-plan sex-worker steadily claiming to be on her way out of the game, but still coming back to Slick Charles for work. She and Jamie Foxx are so good together. They banter back and forth and roast each other giving a lightness to the weighted subject of the film. And though we expect this style from Foxx, Teyonnah holds her own. Together they give us the funniest moments in the movie and easily steal every scene. Like the “I’m Going Down” remix in the elevator scene popular from the film’s trailer. Or when Slick Charles accidentally shoots a lab worker, sending himself and Yo-Yo into a rambling panic; you almost forget they just shot someone in a lab they found underneath a trap house. Even as they slowly start to discover the ordinary elements of their every day lives that the unseen enemy is using to further their sinister plot, Foxx and Parris keep us giggling with their side commentary. The film culminates in a confrontation in an underground base as massive as the town where the elements of the conspiracy are developed, distributed and monitored.
Taylor doesn’t leave any of our common conspiracy theories out of the conversation, giving them all a place and validity in his story. He even morphs the old neighborhood drunk’s jumbled ravings into credible prophesies that our Scooby trio uses as clues on their journey. At the same time, the film’s messaging urges us to understand that we too have some responsibility for our own communities, especially once we wake up to the truths. How much we allow outsiders to interfere in and control our culture is up to us. And don’t let that stop letting their insidious influence pacify us into believing we have no control over our own fates. Nothing demonstrates this more than when Fontaine and Slick Charles find out that Yo-Yo is an academic achiever with former ambitions to be a scholar. Yo-Yo is intelligent and resourceful. She’s a thinker and a planner with the ability to live whatever life she desires, yet she never takes action toward that life.
Another standout in They Cloned Tyrone is its soundtrack. The music is an ever present character pushing the plot forward. The music informs the setting, plot and theme changes because it is one of the very tools beings used as a control mechanism. Fontaine’s day is marked with the west coast hip hop sound. The mood changes when Fontaine is riding around with Slick and Yo-yo. We get a lot of grooving bass lines and funk melodies evoking a Shaft kind of atmosphere. The music changes again to synth EDM with growling bass and driving beats when we learn more and more about the enemies’ plot against the community.
Overall, the film is fun to watch. Each time we discover a deeper conspiracy it’s another chance to yell, “I knew it” at the screen. They Cloned Tyrone satisfies the appetite for our “blame the government” barber shop and front porch discussion sessions. And we get a pretty decent twist at the end.
They Cloned Tyrone is available to watch on Netflix.
