Emergency
A commentary on racism juggles genres with an engaging dexterity.
Fear and supposition: Donald Elise Watkins, Sebastian Chacon and RJ Cyler
College is a perplexing place. On the one hand you’re encouraged to party like there’s no tomorrow, and on the other hand ‘tomorrow’ is what it’s all about. ‘Tomorrow’ means a lot to Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins), a straight-A medical student who’s just won himself a place at Princeton. However, he’s afraid to tell his best friend Sean (RJ Cyler), a fellow African-American whose goals are more hedonistic. Sean is resolved to make his own stamp by becoming the first black student to complete his college’s ‘Legendary Tour’, a feat entailing the attendance of seven frat parties in one night. Kunle and Sean are on the opposite ends of the social spectrum but share the same frat house and the same skin colour. Then, when Kunle discovers the comatose body of a white girl on the floor of a friend’s living room, his reaction is in direct contrast to Sean’s…
A feature-length extension of Carey Williams’s 2018 short of the same name, Emergency could, indeed, have been shorter. At times it feels as if it’s much ado about nothing, a mere platform for the bickering of its two leads. As charismatic – and convincing – as Donald Elise Watkins and RJ Cyler are, their squabbling slows down the narrative. The power of the film is its seeming evasion of a specific genre, as National Lampoon’s Animal House and Booksmart spill over into Get Out and Master. It is funny – but it’s also scary. And yet the movie refuses to define its generic boundaries until shedding all such pretences: and that is a hard act to pull off. On some levels, Emergency is a far more credible work than any of the aforementioned titles.
The real shock factor arrives at the start as Kunle and Sean sit at the back of an all-white class while they are lectured on the “power” of the ‘N’ word by an English professor. They are so taken aback that they can’t even offer up a retaliatory debate. Later, we learn that Kunle has suffered less from racism than Sean, whereby hangs the tale. It transpires that in today’s America, for a black man, a broken taillight can lead to a potentially fatal confrontation with the police. The scenarist K.D. Dávila, who expanded her own screenplay for Williams, is obviously in tune with the effects of language in the wrong mouths. When Sean calls Kunle a pussy, their Hispanic friend Carlos (Sebastian Chacon) objects to the sexist term, arguing that if “a vagina is strong enough to give birth to a child”, it should not be used in a derogatory context. And so the film seesaws from the crude to the philosophical and from the comic to the dramatic with an accomplished sleight of hand. Yet, even as we laugh, Kunle and Sean become more real as the story throws their characters into relief.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: RJ Cyler, Donald Elise Watkins, Sebastian Chacon, Sabrina Carpenter, Maddie Nichols, Madison Thompson, Diego Abraham, Summer Madison, Gillian Rabin, Patrick Lamont Jr, Robert Hamilton III, Nadine Lewington.
Dir Carey Williams, Pro Isaac Klausner, John Fischer and Marty Bowen, Screenplay K.D. Dávila, Ph Michael Dallatorre, Pro Des Jeremy Woodward, Ed Lam T. Nguyen, Music René G. Boscio, Costumes Icy White.
Temple Hill Entertainment-Amazon Media.
106 mins. USA. 2022. UK and US Rel: 27 May 2022. Cert. 15.
