But All Day and a Night’s weakest moment immediately follows. During Jah’s sentencing hearing, the mother of one of his victims makes her statement, demanding to know why Jah did what he did. It should be a heart-wrenching scene, but it instead comes off like it was lifted from an episode of Law & Order. And then the voice overs start. “People say they wanna know why,” says Jah, “but they really don’t.” Cue the flashbacks.
Just as I was beginning to fear I was in for a two-hour PSA against gang violence, the movie corrects course. Cole’s script and direction remain kind of wobbly, however, as the Black Panther screenwriter not only shows us why Jah ended up behind bars, also tells us, just to make sure we get it. Jahkor’s harrowing childhood—getting bullied in elementary school; getting abused at home by his father, JD (Jeffrey Wright), who beats Jah for allowing himself to be bullied—really doesn’t require the extra explanation. It’s not a surprise that by the time Jah is in his late teens he and his friend TQ (Isaiah John) are holding up guys in their East Oakland neighborhood. TQ embraces this outlaw existence, idolizing local celebrity Thug’ish Trex (James Earl), who very much lives the gangsta life he raps about. Jah merely tolerates Trex, not wanting anything to do with his drug dealing but hoping that Trex will help Jah launch his own rap career. Jah then leans that his girlfriend Shantaye (Shakira Ja’nai Payne) is pregnant. Surprisingly, he’s happy about the news and, after hitting a series of brick walls, gets a job working at a faux Foot Locker.
But a low-level retail job doesn’t pay enough to support one person, let alone a family. It’s practically inevitable that Jah would end up working for gang boss and criminally underdeveloped character Big Stunna (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), yet Cole still feels the need to explicitly tell us that this choice is no choice at all. “There’s whole neighborhoods that know more about life inside prison than out,” says Jah in yet another V.O. “Generations of men and women, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunties, cousins, all of us, all part of the same fuckin’ story on fuckin’ repeat. Makin’ this into a life while everybody on the outside looks in, pretending they could do better.”
All Day and a Night features some solid acting, especially from Sanders, Wright and, as Jah’s mother, Kelly Jenrette, as well as some vibrant cinematography. But while the movie is compelling, it never quite hits as hard as you expect it to, mostly because while Cole has decided on the central theme of the school-to-prison pipeline that traps so many young Black men, he never lands on a central story. Much of All Day and a Night is about Jah’s being doomed to a life of crime (i.e., “the same fuckin’ story”), until suddenly it’s about his mending his relationship with his father when he ends up in the same prison as JD. By the end I felt as if I’d watched two B-stories that never quite added up to a single, satisfying film.
