RUSTIN (B) - Colman Domingo carries this chipper bio-pic on his able shoulders, with a forceful performance that tends to knock away the distracting shmaltz that peppers this earnest biography of Bayard Rustin, one of the key forces behind the Civil Rights movement. It would have made a perfect TV movie-of-the-week back in the day.
Domingo imbues Rustin with a brilliant mind, an expansive heart and a savage wit. His face lights up whenever he gets to deliver a particularly poignant putdown. A missing tooth never stops him from flashing a wide grin. That isn't to say that Domingo hams it up in any way. Impossible to know for sure, but it feels like he gets the energy of Rustin just right.
Rustin was on the outs with the NAACP and Martin Luther King in the early '60s. This is despite his heroics as an organizer and mastermind for the Civil Rights movement; but it was due in part to the fact that he was a closeted homosexual, one notably susceptible to blackmail, especially considering the FBI tail on King. In fact, one rival threatens to expose Rustin as King's "queen."
But, in the spirit of a vintage Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney film, Rustin convinces the black powers-that-be to allow him to organize the 1963 March on Washington, with MLK center stage. We all know it's going to be a smash hit, but it's a lot of fun watching Rustin and his ragtag crew shock the world by pulling it off with only a few short months to do so. It's a heart-warming redemption story.
Credit to director George C. Wolfe ("Ma Rainey's Black Bottom") and writers Julian Breece (a TV veteran) and Dustin Lance Black (TV's "Big Love") for crafting a workmanlike piece of biography, even if it is formulaic from beginning to end. Too often the dialogue is stuffed with exposition, especially in the confusing opening scenes that get us situated, as if this is a history lesson for high school freshmen. But the narrative sheds most of that in the second half.
All the youngsters on Rustin's staff are unfailingly bright, clean-cut and as cheery as the day is long, like a bunch of paper dolls. Chris Rock feels out of place as a scowling Roy Wilkins, but Aml Ameen is wonderfully understated as King, and Jeffrey Wright steals a few scenes as the scheming Rep. Adam Clayton Powell. Maxwell Whittington-Cooper's eyes eerily embody the spirit of a young John Lewis. Perhaps the most effective scene in the movie is a showdown between Rustin and his young live-in lover, Tom (Gus Halper), in which the young man shows a cad what a broken heart looks like.
At times I rolled my eyes at how corny and predictable the story could be. At other times, Domingo grabbed me by the shoulders and sat me back down in my chair, back straight. If you make it to the end, you might even tear up at the heroism of a long-suffering soldier who finally steps out of the shadows and gets his day in the sun.
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