THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
When you start living longer than you thought you would, you’ll likely find the damnedest of things.
PLOT
They Cloned Tyrone takes place in a neighborhood called ‘The Glen’ and follows an African drug dealer named Fontaine whose at odds on a daily. His schedule remains simple whereas collects what’s owed to him, mourns the death of his younger brother and checks in on his mother who rarely speaks to him. When he collects from local pimp Slick Charles one night, he gets shot by opposing dealer Isaac (J. Alphonse Nicholson). However by the next day, he continues his schedule as if it never happened. Charles is shook upon seeing him as he saw him get shot down. He even reaches out to local sex worker Yo Yo who confirms what happened since she saw him beforehand. Particularly, Charles remembers he was picked up from a van. Fontaine would take him and Yo Yo with him to find the van, which is parked outside a trap house. When they look inside, they find an elevator that takes them to an underground lab. There, they would find a white scientist who spills that the operation has gone widespread. When Charles snorts a substance he assumes to be cocaine, he ends up forcibly laughing and accidentally kills the scientist after Yo Yo causes an explosion due to tampering with chemicals. On the way out, Fontaine finds a corpse identical to him, revealing he is a clone. When he chooses to go back the next morning, the lab has disappeared. When he eats at a fried chicken restaurant with Yo Yo and Charles, the latter quickly notices everyone inside laughing simultaneously, realizing they’re being drugged with the same substance from the laboratory. When Yo Yo chooses to seduce the restaurant manager (who resembles the dead scientist) to further investigate, she discovers in his office has a wall of televisions surveilling the whole neighborhood. As they choose to explore the Glen, they deduce that the substance is also being used in hair products and grape drinks. Thanks to a cryptic hint from a local drunk, the group notices the churchgoers collectively sing disturbing lyrics due to the grape drinks. By night, the find another elevator in the altar, which takes them to a facility large enough to span the whole neighborhood. They witness black people be subject to behavioral experiments and the white scientists are controlling the clones through visual stimulation, certain songs & certain trigger words. The further they look, they find more clones in cryosleep where not only are there more copies of Fontaine, but also Slick Charles and the whole neighborhood. When they flee, they get chased by brainwashed club goers of a strip club. The chase gets halted when another white man appears, credited as Nixon who also arrives with a Fontaine clone dubbed ‘Chester’. The former explains that the experiments have been conducted on impoverished neighborhoods like the Glen to keep operations unnoticed, but believes it can achieve peace in America. He threatens Yo Yo to stop investigating by using a trigger word on Fontaine, making him point a gun at himself. The next day, Yo Yo stills chooses to blow the whistle due to being unaffected by the trigger words, but gets kidnapped by Nixon for her defiance. Fontaine would cave in taking a stand when discovering the voice of his mother was only a tape recording. He orchestrates rescuing Yo Yo by faking his death sneak back into the lab. He pulls this off when telling the truth of the neighborhood to Isaac, who he allows to shoot him to make his death realistic. With the help of Slick Charles and numerous residents, they storm the lab to free the clones and everyone being experimented on. As this happens Yo Yo breaks free and gets the help from Charles to kill Nixon. Fontaine tries to take on Chester, but gets overpowered and is taken to an older Fontaine, the real version of him whose part of the operation. He reveals his attempt to make peace by whitewashing black people into whites through mind control and felt prompted to make the clones after his brother was killed by a cop in racially motivated fashion. The cloned Fontaine is able to kill the real deal when using a trigger word on Chester and ordering him to shoot him. After he does this, all the clones are spilled out to the public which exposes the country’s secret operation. The cloned Fontaine agrees to join Yo Yo and Charles to head to Memphis to further expose & stop the operation. The film would end with another Fontaine clone named Tyrone, who lives in Los Angeles and discovers the Glen bombshell while watching television.THOUGHTS
Netflix can make a dime a dozen movies all year and nobody would notice until you see it. The second I heard about this one, I just had a feeling this would be special and boy was it ever. Writer/Director Juel Taylor gets you hooked in a sci fi mystery that pulls you in layer by layer. The whole soundtrack is so dope because you get excited of the mood of suspicion, knowing shit will go down in glorious style. The setting feels like it can fit any era because while most of the costumes for the Glen residents resemble a pre-90s era, the production design on the labs suit the 2020s. I feel so connected to this movie because its visible inspiration from past films make way for the general message: Confronting violence with violence only creates endless more difficult to break and just because you know something can be done for a greater good, does not mean it should be done. This was boldly explored thanks to an impressive cast. One way or another, I believe this can go down as the best performance of John Boyega's career due to the multiple roles he is tasked with. The one character we root for the most is the cloned Fontaine. We're in this feeling because no living being should be treated as an object and once he realized the truth of himself, he knew he couldn't stop until everyone else knew what was going on. That's where you would kinda look up to him because you don't quit until you succeed. Now that Tyrone slowly realizes what he is, I hope can follow similar footsteps. While I got chills of him being the soulless Chester, I ended up trembling upon the revelation of the original Fontaine. You do sympathize for him because his loss broke him to do something terrible. We all wish we can get back what we lost, but we shouldn't let out our grief by doing something so unforgivable. So when his clone uses Chester to kill him, it is a mercy kill that can bring one relief closer to complete victory. On the bright side, the cloned Fontaine found unexpected allies to tell what had to be heard. Slick Charles is not the ideal role model since he relishes in what he does, but Jamie Foxx surprises us when showing he's just like Fontaine where he had no choice with his lifestyle until he found out he did all along. He's the most scared throughout because it is a lot for him to digest like any sane person would, but he still takes part sharing the truth because even he knows it's right. He definitely earned mad respect for being able to realize everyone was being drugged. Had he not figured that out, the group would've not gone far. That moment comes to show the power of self awareness. Teyonah Parris was the life of the party when playing Yo Yo. Ironically due to how she is confirmed to be human since there is no clone found, she stood out for having the most energy in her and doesn't have regrets in expressing it at any moment. Her messing with the chemicals is only proof of that, even though that wasn't really smart of her. She stands out more because she's the only one who speaks aloud on regretting her life not going as planned and always desires to do better. And uncovering the truth of the Glen was her chance to do that. She refused to give up no matter what because she knew stopping wasn't gonna solve anything. This was her wakeup call to take control and she got to do just that. Because of her, I wanna start reading some Nancy Drew books again. Now that the truth is out for the Glen, I do hope she and her unlikely friends continue succeeding within their path of justice Last but not least, Nixon wasn't even the main villain yet Kiefer Sutherland got under our skin in the blink of an eye as this character. Like the original Fontaine, he is so blind to think he's making a difference with what he's part of, he'll be relentless to keep the process going. So he doesn't get any sympathy when he gets taken down. Had he considered doing memory wipes, the government likely would've gotten away with what they're doing, but luckily that didn't happen. In short, They Cloned Tyrone is one 2023’s positive highlights for cleverly mixing blaxploitation with sci fi. If you have Netflix and prefer either genre, check this out as soon as possible.
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