CARGO: A Neo-Colonialist Story Told From The Wrong Side

This is the story of a man named Kevin (Warren Brown). He’s a white American living in the Bahamas with his wife, son, and mother. He’s down on his luck with a struggling fishing business, not helped by his instinctive gambling. Adding to matters is a wife who is in a constant rage with his inability to pay the bills, pay for his son’s private school tuition, and his apparent burden of a dementia-addled mother who smears her feces all over her bedroom walls. “You’re the worst thing to happen to me,” she says. “I married into less.” He eventually finds his lucky streak when given an offer by the Major (Craig Pinder): smuggle Haitian refugees to another island en route to the United States.

This is the story of Kareem Mortimer‘s Cargo, and a story about the perils of neo-colonialism. A pity that it isn’t the right approach for such a story. All the makings of a reflective piece touching on every facet of the Caribbean’s more nuanced and varied history of racial disparity and its treatment of refugees. It would reflect strongly on a film made from the Bahamas as well, providing insight only a native could muster. The disappointment when it turns out to regurgitate the messages of a Hollywood production despite the unique style can’t be understated.

Not a Hero, But Not Compelling Either

All of the weight falls on Kevin, and our focus is pulled onto him for the entirety of nearly two hours. We learn the basics of his situation in spades: he’s the undoubted author of his own demise, dating back to an unexplained incident with the law that wound up getting his wife deported, and his family virtually exiled from America. The film continues to show how everything unfolds due to his ignorance of compassion for the various people of color he’s surrounded by every day, taking nothing into consideration of their own dreams and prejudices. In short bursts, it truly does feel like the film is pointing the finger where it should be, and giving us an unlikable protagonist that seeks to wrestle with his place in the society.

What Mortimer‘s script ultimately does is frame everything from Kevin’s point of view, and treats it as an inconvenience we expect him to overcome. On its own, this can be viewed as another negative attribute to his small worldview: living as if he’s in his home country where everything can be put on hold for people like him. Cargo would rather let this go unnoticed, and as a result, it makes genuine concern for his well-being and the crummy life he’s subjecting people to look antagonistic.

His wife Berneice (Persia White) suffers most from it, appearing more as a nagging basketcase, and just another burden to him than a woman who was dealt an equally poor if not worse hand. We’re never given much view into how it effects her aside from the surface, where he confides in his friend Eddie (Omar J. Dorsey) that he brushes off every argument because it always ends with her being sorry. As a matter of fact, his adulterous love interest Celianne (Gessica Geneus) has minimal screen time despite the first third of the film setting up her life parallel to Kevin’s as if they’ll be immediately linked. All we receive is that her Haitian heritage is looked down upon by her boss at a bar Kevin and Eddie frequent, and that she has a son. More detail and sympathy is given to the nameless and often speechless refugees Kevin is transporting, but that leans on becoming manipulation.

It’s the case of a film wishing to have its cake and eat it too. Kevin must be ignorant to his privilege and the suffering he inflicts from his actions, but at the same time, he has to be sympathetic. Doing so by rejecting the named characters’ agency and treating their issues as just overreactions do a disservice to the nuance it intended to bring in the first place. Whether intentional or not, such a matter also colors the women in a negative light, as they’re the most vocal ones who call out his problems. It’s a fundamental flaw in what sells itself to address a crisis created by systemic silencing.

Good at Looking Good

For what it’s all worth, Cargo does have a particular tool that shows how it’s no ordinary film on the topic. Yes, coming out of the Bahamas gives it the new audience to appreciate international film, but even in spite of a low budget and the varied technical issues, it boasts a visual style that does deserve more to carry. Cinematographer Ian Bloom seemed to stress not the explosive colors one expects of a tropical environment in cinema, namely the exoticism that James Bond films will aim for, but an overcast palate that shows what the tropics are on a regular basis.

The seas are solid blue, the sky is a common overcast, and the skin of the natives still glistens in it all. It is always refreshing to note how dark skin appears better on camera these days, and that comes from people learning how to properly light it. The team behind the look can’t be shoved aside, and the atmosphere that coincides with it makes for a pace that’s leisurely but never meandering.

Tension is being built with every event, and it does pay off in a few scenes, such as one involving the Jamaican maid (Sky Nicole Grey) Kevin hires with his new money. It appears as one of the moments that does consider the effects the lead character is bringing, and how much worse off people around him become due to his induced indifference. Even the Major, a white man speaking with a Bahamian accent who has a similar detachment from his operation of human smuggling (“That sounds so sinister,” he says. “I call it the transportation business!”), calls his sudden changes of heart inauthentic. The hypocrisy element stands for a grand total of one scene sadly, leaving us with more unchecked attitudes from the protagonist, all building up to a final character decision that worsens the deal and sells a sadder falsehood.

Cargo: Conclusion

Most of the review could end up sounding redundant, but even in its contemplative length and pacing, Cargo offers little in its efforts to mull over completely. The cause is noble, and the right direction is being pulled towards only incidentally. It’s not enough to bear a flawed moral struggle that also is swamped by some trite dialogue which exists to refuse the power of letting events speak for themselves. It ends up falling behind the message it wants to convey and downplays the harm when it could’ve delivered quite the punch to the gut.

There’s no pleasure in saying this was a disappointment. Something powerful was expected right out the gate, but Kareem Mortimer‘s film leans away from making such statements as if it’s too hard to tackle the nuances it sets up.

What other films cover neo-colonialist themes? Do you consider that they do them well or poorly? If you’ve seen Cargo, how do you believe they are by comparison?

Cargo was released to video-on-demand on September 13 from Artist Rights Distribution.