Cuba Gooding, Jr. has become such a punchline in recent years — thanks to parts in disposable fare like Radio and Boat Trip — that it's easy to forget he was, once upon a time, a fine dramatic actor. It is possible Gooding was trying to re-connect with his earlier, more stoic self when he took the lead in Shadowboxer, as a tortured hitman with a dark past and an icy, no-nonsense demeanor. ...read more

Cuba Gooding, Jr. has become such a punchline in recent years — thanks to parts in disposable fare like Radio and Boat Trip — that it's easy to forget he was, once upon a time, a fine dramatic actor. It is possible Gooding was trying to re-connect with his earlier, more stoic self when he took the lead in Shadowboxer, as a tortured hitman with a dark past and an icy, no-nonsense demeanor.
    To be fair, Gooding's intensity is one of the best things about Shadowboxer. The problem is that the film should have been a comedy. More accurately, somebody should have realized that the film is a comedy. It's the story of two assassins (Gooding and Helen Mirren) who also happen to be lovers, as well as stepmother and son. Also, she's dying of cancer. Their last job is to off a whole bunch of gangster types — associates of the duplicitous crimelord that hired them, played by Stephen Dorff, whose introduction comes by way of a broken pool cue stuck up the ass of his wife's lover. Among Gooding and Mirren's targets is Dorff's pregnant wife, whose water suddenly breaks before our heroes are able to get off a shot. Needless to say, they take the girl and her child in. Wackiness ensues.
    The problem with Shadowboxer isn't the bizarre storyline stacked Babel-high with absurdities. It's that director Lee Daniels plays the whole thing insufferably straight, which makes for an incongruity bordering on the experimental: Lush cinematography and tasteful music and grim foreboding in the service of a ridiculous storyline, like a Tarantino movie hijacked by Merchant-Ivory. The only actors who seem to be in on the joke are some supporting turns: Macy Gray as a dim-but-loyal party girl and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as, um, a "doctor." Gooding, on the other hand, does a fine job acting in a movie that does not exist. The one that does exist, sadly, does him no favors. — Bilge Ebiri click to close