In Flash twice, oneActress-turned-director Zoë Kravitz’s camera is so in love with her muse that she forgets he’s a tech billionaire.
Photo: Amazon MGM Studios
The most fascinating leading men in Hollywood history know the value of shaking up their reputation as a charismatic hero. Tyrone Power was a reliable romantic leading man, but he played the smug murderer in Billy Wilder’s 1957 film. Witness for the prosecution. In 1959, the battered and injured Burt Lancaster took on the role of a sleazy newspaper columnist in the pitch-black noir he produced. Sweet scent of success. In 1963, a tender Paul Newman strutted through Hud as a pompous son with a cutting smile and bottomless stare. Denzel Washington was cruelly deep in the dirt as a cop willing to use his privilege against vulnerable black and brown communities in the admittedly abhorrent 2001 film Training day. I am particularly excited about how Cary Grant portrayed his role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious And Suspicion — where all the charm and grace he had otherwise displayed came across as both important armor and hidden weapon. These turns require not only an actor able and willing to break through his own carefully constructed image, but also a script with vision and a director with wild style who understands the stories a star’s body tells.
Get in Flash twice — previously and richly titled Pussy Island — I was curious about star Channing Tatum’s heel turn. Here, Hollywood’s favorite affable himbo decided to play a dangerous billionaire tech bro capable of luring young women into his trap, overturning his image as a good-natured golden retriever of a man, strengthened and refined by the Magic Mike Films that portrayed him as very interested in female pleasure. When it came to actress turned screenwriter and director (and also Tatum’s romantic partner), Zoë Kravitz, I had enjoyed her as a red carpet model with sharp cheekbones and an aura so relaxed that she seemed disillusioned. After she The Batman (2022) and played the agoraphobic in Steven Soderbergh’s thrilling Kimi (2022), I also became intrigued by her potential as a storyteller who could do more than create a seductive but thinly drawn mood. But when I heard she would be directing Flash twice (co-written by Kravitz and ET Feigenbaum), A question immediately came to mind: Can a woman like her – born into a wealth and visibility denied to most black girls thanks to her ultra-cool parents, actress Lisa Bonet and musician Lenny Kravitz – seriously critique the intersections of wealth, misogyny and control that the film’s “Eat the Rich” premise promises?
Unfortunately, Kravitz doesn’t have the vision or the range to skillfully take aim at the hideous weaknesses of rich men, let alone destroy Tatum’s reputation on screen. Flash twice is a frustratingly timid take on the billionaire class, too busy doting on Tatum’s character to even notice that she’s making this mistake. Or that she’s neglecting her own leading lady, Frida, played with gullible, wide-eyed appreciation by Naomi Ackie. She’s introduced sitting on the toilet in the bathroom of her crappy apartment, preparing to go to her crappy job helping cater a swanky gala that Tatum’s character, improbably named Slater King, is supposed to attend. Before the event, Frida furiously scours the internet, her eyes hungry for more information on Slater. She comes across a recent video of him chatting to a black journalist and explaining that he’s resigned from his powerful company and bought an island. He apologizes for an indiscretion that the film itself never explained; we can only assume it is an act of sexual inappropriateness or deliberate misogyny. So why does this penniless, working-class, and otherwise ill-defined black woman abandon all self-preservation and common sense to woo him?
I still don’t know. At the gala, Frida and her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) swap their catering uniforms for shimmering dresses and try to blend in with the wealthy crowds around Slater and get closer to him. Frida proves to be clumsy. Champagne is spilled, glass breaks. Meanwhile, Slater is unlike any billionaire I’ve ever seen – and not just because he looks like Thebut because he possesses a kindness that is uncharacteristic of him. The camera is often placed below him, the light above him becoming a halo beneath which his smile is warm and his hands are outstretched. Of course, Frida takes them. It’s a shot – from the framing to the dress to the sculptural movements of the actor’s body – worthy of a fairytale prince. And that’s repeated at key points throughout the film. It’s a meet-cute, like in a romantic comedy. If you squint and tilt your head, you can see the possibilities Kravitz foregoes in favor of this lukewarm approach. The film’s layers reveal a (half-hearted) critique of how rich men wield their power, crossed with a (black) girl boss revenge story. It’s a shame that this film is stuck on the “come on, girl, don’t give us anything” tone, which would seem dated even if it had come out in the heyday of similar works from the late 2010s and very early 2020s – vividly filmed, empty-headed works like Emerald Fennell’s 2020 Promising young womanwhich unfortunately feels similar.
For a moment, I thought Kravitz was going to combine Frida’s obsession with Slater’s beauty and wealth with an analysis of the trends of easy living and quiet wealth that make black women believe that the architects of their misfortune (i.e. men) will save them from the drudgery of our economic system. It’s the black community’s very own tradwife-esque trend, but with more glamour. The film Only misses the subtleties – the way women compete for men’s affections and how everyone loses; gaslighting at its extreme; how the grand gestures and romantic myths we’ve bought into lead us to exploitation; the ways men, particularly men with power or wealth, manipulate and control. At the gala, Frida and Jess are introduced to Slater’s inner circle, which includes foodie-mad Cody (Simon Rex); obnoxious, nervous Tom (Haley Joel Osment); Slater’s right-hand man in personal and business life, who is strangely missing a pinky, Vic (Christian Slater); harried assistant Stacy (Geena Davis); and Rich, Slater’s smooth-talking therapist (Kyle MacLachlan). A montage follows (this film relies heavily on montage as a narrative cheat code) showing Frida and Slater flirting, surrounded by the eager eyes of his friends and the sterile backdrop of an increasingly empty fundraiser. The flirtation leads to an invitation that turns into a private jet trip to his geographically murky private island. Other women are there, including Sarah (Adria Arjona from HitMan)who desires Slater so much that to call her thirsty would be an understatement. Her eyes flash in Frida’s direction from the start as she notes how sweet Slater is to her, making their eventual turn from tacit enemies to captured girl power thugs seem both abrupt and unearned.
As Slater shows Frida around the island, he’s good-natured, with a flirtatious look and a confident but not cocky grin. He cracks jokes, his body language is open. Their chemistry is palpable to everyone around them. It comes across as an uncanny romance that the film doesn’t have the guts to look at head-on. Because of course the truth about the island and the nastiness Slater has committed with the assistance of his gleeful, cruel friends will be revealed. It can’t be all about delicious meals and endless indulgences. Yet by then, the film, or more specifically Kravitz’s lens, seems to have embraced its own fantasy of Slater. You can see it in the raspberries dipped in the ever-flowing champagne, the poolside tan, the green expanse of the island, the rustic decor in the buildings, the endless laughter and light, and the quietly ignored brown workers who keep all this beauty going. Time stretches and becomes sluggish until Frida doesn’t even know what day it is. When Jess disappears and no one remembers her, the film should turn on its axis and let the darkness creep out. But its makers seem more interested in portraying overconsumption and wealth as what everyone secretly longs for. Even as the absurdity of a third act involving snakes and perfumes approaches, the filmmakers’ touch is too gentle. Cinematographer Andrew Newport-Berra, who impressed me with his work on “The Last Man,” The last black man in San Franciscoshoots the film with an almost too-bright, frothy quality. The world is as sun-kissed and seductive as a Netflix dating series, and filmed just as flatly. This aesthetic might work if the frame were more dynamically populated, if there were more visual subtext, if it embodied a script with a clear-eyed perspective on the shadows outside the frame and the men who inhabit them. But it’s not. When Jess says it’s odd that their respective suites are furnished with white linen clothing in their exact sizes, Frida doesn’t think that’s odd, just that it’s part of being “rich.”
Strangest of all is the story’s raciallessness—it never explores the delicate aspects of Frida’s attraction to a white man of that social class, or her experiences as a dark-skinned black woman in such a white milieu. Tatum’s skill as a performer is tested by sticking to the surface of Frida’s story. Toward the end of the film, Slater repeats similar phrasing to that shown by Frida before the gala, apologizing until he’s basically screaming “I’m sorry,” with drool flying, face tense, body hunched, crouched low. But like any man too self-absorbed and too unhealed to face the truth about himself, he doesn’t even say what he’s apologizing for. It’s not entirely Tatum’s fault that he can’t pull off this role, physically or emotionally. But in the end, his performance is as shallow as the script, lacking the verve and ingenuity that would make Frida’s obsession fascinating. And Kravitz’s camera is too in love with him, too gentle to let Tatum be as mean as the film requires. It focuses on his lips, his arms, his stubble, his smile. It is too fixated on the surface of the story to see the depths of what the beauty of an actor like Tatum can convey. Blood is shed, lies are exposed, but the truth is never found. Flash twice is ultimately a shimmering gimmick that wants to be taken more seriously than it deserves.
Show all
