All Day and a Night Netflix Movie Review

All Day and a Night (2020)

Watch All Day and a Night on Netflix
Written by: Joe Robert Cole
Directed by: Joe Robert Cole
Starring: Ashton Sanders, Jeffrey Wright, Isaiah John, Regina Taylor, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
Rated: R

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More Information

Plot
A young man who committed a homicide deals with the repercussions of his action.

Verdict
This focuses on the cycle of violence and how parents influence children. It's a continuing cycle. Plenty of movies attempt the same thing, and this movie is a competent effort.
It depends.

Review
It's easy to compare this to Moonlight due to Ashton Sanders and the content, or O.G. which also stars Jeffrey Wright. Jeffery Wright is more believable in O.G., a movie about life in prison and all the forces pulling on him as he considers whether he wants to leave. It doesn't delve as deep as Moonlight which seems like a sort of precursor to this. All three movies are introspective, wondering how the character ended up where they are.

Ashton Sanders plays Jahkor.

This starts off harsh with a murder. Jahkor is an intriguing character because he is so quiet. You internalize what's going on with him and what he's thinking. There isn't a lot of exposition, which helps draw you in. This presents the cycle of why Jahkor is who he is and how he got there. His father is in prison, and it's no surprise Jahkor ended up there too. That's the life he knows, and that's the life his father trained him in. Jahkor has a child on the way, and it's easy to see this cycle continuing.

With how quiet Jahkor is, we can conclude what he's thinking and how those thoughts materialize into actions. This movie does a great job of showing and not telling.