Jake’s Take At The Movies: Fast Color

By: Jacob Elyachar, jakes-take.com

Thanks to the box office success of The Hunger Games franchise, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel, films centered on female characters have been accepted by moviegoers worldwide.  Fast Color hopes to ride this wave as it introduces audiences to three generations of women with extraordinary gifts.

Warning! Spoilers Are Ahead…

Fast Color’s plot centers around a young woman named Ruth (A Wrinkle in Time’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw) as she is hunted down by mysterious forces lead by Bill (Christopher Denham) who want to control her supernatural abilities.  When her powers are discovered, Ruth flees back to her childhood home where she must make amends with her mother, Bo (Into the Badlands and Orange is the New Black’s Lorraine Toussaint) and her daughter Lila (Hidden Figures’ Saniyya Sidney), who Bo raised while Ruth went on the run.  Meanwhile, Sheriff Ellis (David Strathairn) pursues Ruth, who may have a connection to the powerful young woman.

End of Spoilers

Mbatha-Raw, Toussaint, and Sidney are given the task of carrying the majority of Fast Color. This trio of women shine on camera through some of the film’s dramatic scenes. Toussaint delivers a superb performance as she commands every single scene that Bo is featured in. In addition, Sidney’s Lila proves to be a role model for her generation as her character showcases determination and grit as a skilled mechanic and engineer.

Husband and wife team Jordan Horowitz and Julia Hart co-wrote the Fast Color. The duo did a superb job creating this dystopian world and wrote memorable dialogue between the three women.  They also crafted a superb emotional monologue for Bo that is used to set the stage for a potential Fast Color universe.  The only problem that I had with the screenplay was the inclusion of Bill’s boss, who might be a hybrid of Pokémon’s Giovanni and Batman’s Black Mask.  I wished that Horowitz and Hart utilized him more in the film, because he could have been used to foreshadow a future Fast Color sequel or in the film’s emotional climax.

Another one of Fast Color’s strength was its visual effects. During some of the film’s crucial scenes, there were a spectacular arrangement of Technicolor delights tied to Ruth’s story. However, the colorful visual effects might be a little too sensory overload for several moviegoers.  

Final thoughts and grade: Fast Color is a splendid science fiction thriller that also acts as a family drama. Thanks to Horowitz and Hart’s screenplay, Mbatha-Raw, Toussaint, and Sidney are able to deliver superb performances that will impact their careers in the entertainment industry. Hopefully, LD Entertainment and Codeblack Films will expand the Fast Color universe in the future. B+