Movie Review: “Beyond the Lights” (Rated PG-13)
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Relativity(NEW YORK) — Done no favors by a marketing campaign that reeks of “been there done that,” Beyond the Lights is a surprising film buoyed by a terrific performance from star Gugu Mbatha-Raw, opposite the vastly underrated Nate Parker.
Mbatha-Raw (Belle) plays Noni, an up-and-coming pop singer who’s just starting to blow up, thanks to a collaboration she does with a rapper named Kid Culprit, played by real rapper Machine Gun Kelly. Noni is gifted, blessed not only with a gorgeous voice, but looks to match. Not helping, her overbearing mother and manager, Macy (Minnie Driver), encourages her child to show more skin than singing talent.
When we first meet Noni, she’s a lost soul, drowning in her own ocean of over-sexualized hype. She’s just won her first Billboard award, she’s dating Kid Culprit, and seemingly has everything she’s ever wanted. That’s when she decides to leap off her hotel balcony. Don’t worry, she never makes it to the ground: the police officer assigned to her hotel room grabs her as she falls. She wants to let go, but the officer, Kaz, played by Parker, looks her in the eyes and says, “I see you.” Noni allows him to pull her to safety.
The rumors start to fly that Noni tried to throw herself off the balcony. Macy buys Kaz’s uneasy silence with a $10,000 check, and at a press conference they tell the world Noni was drunk and slipped.
Noni is drawn to Kaz and it soon becomes clear why. He’s an intelligent, confident, no BS, quietly ambitious dude who hopes to affect change by running for office. These two, of course, fall for each other, but there are plenty of obstacles standing in the way of their finding happiness together.
I love the job writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood does here, sure-handedly presenting a story that unfolds like that moment up on that balcony, with Noni ready let go as Kaz struggles to save her. She keeps the cameras close and the dialogue economical, finding the truth in her actors’ eyes. It helps that in Mbatha-Raw, Parker and Driver, she has three actors who excel at delivering truth.
Had Beyond the Lights been much less predictable and allowed the protagonist to be even more independent when finding her truth, it would’ve been a truly special movie, with something a little more important to say. That said, it’s still a solid and entertaining film that tugs at the heart.
Three-and-a-half out of five stars.
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