![]() Also, although Martin doesn't give a sanitized view of these hard-living, often cruel individuals, her script feels underwritten and so basic that the actors often seem to be mugging and hamming it up on-screen just to fill up the dead air. ![]() Part of the problem is that re-recorded versions of songs by the actors were used in the film, with vastly mixed results that never match the ferocity and excitement of the original tracks. We never get a real sense of what made these recordings so different or revolutionary. Never mind, because any in-the-know blues aficionado will find Cadillac Records –- named after Chess' penchant for giving Cadillac cars to his musicians instead of actually paying them - a historically suspect picture of the Chess Records legend. Never mind that while having crafted a film with a multi-character approach, Martin does not include numerous other influential Chess artists, such as Bo Diddley, Gene Ammons, Buddy Guy, and Otis Rush, just to name a few. Never mind that Chess, played with a romantic dewy passion by Brody, was by most accounts a hard ass in business and life who never paid his musicians their fare share of royalties -– a point never made explicit in the film. Never mind that Chess founded the label with his brother, a character missing from the film. The rest is musical history as we see how the success of other Chess artists like Chuck Berry helped integrate the segregated music audiences of the '50s, kick starting the rock & roll era. Eventually, Chess and Waters cross paths, pay off several disc jockeys to get the records they record played on the radio, and use their earnings to open the Chess Records studio. At the same time, Dixon tells us how Waters, discovered by musicologist Alan Lomax on a plantation in Mississippi, goes from being an acoustic country bumpkin to an urban guitar-slinger. The story, told through voice-over narration from Cedric the Entertainer in an understated and folksy performance as Chess bassist and musical mastermind Willie Dixon, begins in the '40s and is a basic American dream fable in which Chess, a Polish immigrant, goes from being a bar owner and record label huckster to one of the first rock & roll impresarios. Instead, Martin chooses to detail the rise to prominence of the legendary Chicago-based Chess Records label founded in 1950 by producer Leonard Chess (Adrian Brody) and featuring his roster of influential blues artists, including guitarist/vocalist Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), harmonica player Little Walter (Columbus Short), guitarist/vocalist Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), and singer Etta James (Beyonce Knowles). The life of rock & roll icon Chuck Berry alone, played here by the charmingly sly and underutilized Mos Def, includes enough musical innovation and run-ins with the law to fill several cinematic installments. Any one of the seven main characters featured in writer/director Darnell Martin's 2008 blues-biopic Cadillac Records could have garnered their own film.
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