Mickey Hardaway

The decision to go to therapy is so often the sticking point in a journey to recovery that when Mickey Hardaway (Rashad Hunter) eagerly agrees to the suggestion, made by his girlfriend Grace (Ashley Parchment), one might think that his struggles are coming to an end. As we will learn from subsequent flashbacks, Grace has been worried about his drinking and signs of depression. He’s just lost his first real job as an artist and feels as if he is condemned to failure. He’s young and talented and it shouldn’t take that much to turn him around – but there’s a darkness calling to Mickey, and he could all too easily find himself going down a dangerous road.

Adapted by Marcellus Cox from his 2020 short, and featuring a breakout performance by the same young star, this is palpably a first feature, but there are ways in which it shines. The acting is strong all round and there’s some beautiful cinematography, mostly in black and white – all of it to a point. Cox has a liking for theatrical framing which often positions the viewer at a distance, sometimes observing from behind something, emphasising the helplessness of that position. We see what’s happening to Mickey, as many of us will have seen it in one young person after another in real life, and yet there’s nothing we can do to intervene.

The film struggles for two reasons. Firstly, there is nothing about Mickey’s story that hasn’t been told many times before. Secondly, there isn’t really enough material for a full length film. Where the story needs further development, instead we get scenes which are drawn out way past their natural conclusions, with a lot of repetition and overstatement. This risks alienating viewers and it significantly weakens the overall impact of the piece. That said, the way the actors deal with it is all the more impressive – it’s one thing to hit home will well written, natural dialogue, but it takes significantly more skill to make a less accomplished script come across as well as this does.

It should go without saying that a lot of viewers will strongly relate to Mickey, and that’s a lot of the film’s appeal. He’s a young man who has grown up in a violent home, his father making every effort to keep him from pursuing his passion, and has thereafter had to cope in an unsympathetic, exploitative marketplace. It’s the subtler aspects of his struggle that hold more narrative potential, however. The social gulf between him and a psychiatrist who rides roughshod over the usual rules of his profession – offering opinions, giving advice, comparing Mickey’s childhood to his own and even uttering the phrase “Every boy needs his father” – leaves him feeling isolated just where he should be receiving help. At every stage, it’s clear how few points of contact he has with the wider world, how little resource society puts into reaching out to people in his position.

With most of the issues here at the script level, the film provides a good showcase for Cox as a director, as well as for its stars. There are some issues with the sound design but overall the technical work is good. One hopes that this will be enough to attract further funding to the team, because whilst we may have seen this story before, there are plenty of other possibilities adjacent to its themes and those in Cox’s short works, and – like Mickey himself – the film evidences clear potential.