SLEIGHT: Strong Themes Shine Through Its Frustrating Plot

Sleight is one of those movies that feels like it’s really two scripts stitched together – and these kinds of movies tend to doom themselves with inconsistent pacing and a lack of coherence. Impressively, Sleight does avoid these typical issues but can’t escape a few others, falling short of the classic it aspires to be.

What does Sleight do right?

Sleight is pretty ambitious, which is great; I’d much rather a movie take some risks and bite off a little more than it can chew than settle for mediocrity. It’s a superhero origin story stirred into a magician movie, with some racial and socioeconomic difficulties sprinkled throughout. And even though Sleight doesn’t quite reach the heights it aspires to, we still end up with a fairly enjoyable genre-bender and some strong themes that stick with us long after the credits roll.

In what could have been a jarring, confusing plot, director J.D. Dillard keeps the pacing just right to give us a captivating slow-burn thriller. We weave in and out of street magic, family life, and drug dealing without getting disoriented, even if we do wonder why Bo (Jacob Latimore) doesn’t take some of that handy dandy magic stuff and apply it to his drug dealing situation (but more on that later).

I’m lucky enough to say that pretty much everything I know about drug dealing and organized crime, I learned from Hollywood. Unfortunately, most movies have their main character make some obviously-bad decisions that land him with the wrong crowd, almost losing the audience’s empathy before redemption time rolls around.

These kinds of movies make it hard to really understand why an intelligent, well-intentioned person could end up as a violent criminal; but to be fair, portraying the downfall of a character while maintaining relatability is an especially tough path to navigate, so it’s impressive when a movie pulls this off well.

Sleight does an outstanding job of illustrating how seductive the wrong people can be at first, how easy it can be to get involved with them, and how much they can control you when you’re in too deep. Pulling this off challenges the audience to consider how this could happen to us, instead of letting us sit back and feel smarter than the protagonist. Even if Sleight’s only strength was effectively telling this story that’s too-often simplified on the big screen, it would still be worth your time.

One last little thing I appreciated: there’s a scene where Bo has to consult his former science teacher to figure out how to boost his powers. In pretty much every other movie with one of these scenes (and there are a lot of them), we have to spend a couple minutes waiting on the flabbergasted teacher to get done with his conniption fit and his dilemma about doing something dangerous. But in Sleight, we get the much better “ah cool, I see you’ve outfitted your arm with this electromagnet thing, let’s see what this baby can do”.

It’s almost cool enough to distract us from the “educated white person swoops in to help out talented but confused minority” trope. Almost.

What does Sleight do wrong?

Where the movie excels with its deft pacing, it misses the mark with some actual plot points. While slowly finding out more and more about our protagonist’s powers can be effective in keeping the audience interested, it does handicap the story. Think about it this way: up until the final showdown, the defining characteristic of our main character is more or less absent from the movie.

The scriptwriters gave Bo the power to move things around just by flicking his wrist, and then… they just let him watch while bad things happen around him and to him. They were thinking way too far inside the box here.

Seriously, our main character essentially has superpowers, and the fastest way he can think of to earn money is street magic for tips? Inserting a superhero or magician into a drug dealing story opens up a ton of possibilities that we really haven’t seen before. Unfortunately, they are left mostly unexplored, and we have to watch Bo stand idly by, essentially powerless for the majority of the movie.

Essentially, there were just two reasons magic was in the movie at all: one, to have a cool scene where Bo pulls a Kylo Ren on some bullets (don’t get me wrong: very cool scene). Two, to linger on poster of Houdini a few times and really drive home the whole “nothing can keep me prisoner” message. To be fair, that was a nice little device to tie Bo’s two lives together – it just could have been more powerful if the magic part was actually a meaningful part of the movie, instead of a one-scene payoff.

Lots of little things in Sleight come off as a rich person’s idea of being poor, ultimately leaving us with a romanticized version of a difficult situation.  Tina (Storm Reid) is a perfect person and sister despite losing both of her parents. Bo and Tina both live in a comfortable house, none of the money problems that Bo mentions are ever made apparent, everyone is super attractive and Holly (Seychelle Gabriel) is unbelievably accommodating and understanding.

Actually, let’s talk about Holly for a second. She’s such a flat character, but she’s so nice you can’t even be mad. “I have to leave in the middle of our first date after five minutes.” No problem, call me later. “I have to leave in the middle of our second date so I can go cut this dude’s hand off.” That’s cool, I’ll stay home with your sister. “Actually, I’m a drug dealer, I’ve been lying to you this whole time, and everyone I love is in danger.” OK, here’s my life savings.

It’s a little much, Holly. Play hard to get or something.

Conclusion

Sleight was this close to being really good. Its themes about taking responsibility for your situation and the lack of opportunities afforded to poor minorities are certainly powerful and effectively communicated (making Sleight worth your time). But it pulls too much of a bait-and-switch, showing us Bo’s powers then not allowing him to use them. It’s a little frustrating and pulls you out of the movie at times, but the payoff and take home messages are good enough to mostly forgive these glaring flaws.

That’s enough from me – what did you think of Sleight? What more would you like to see out of genre mash-ups like this? Let us know in the comments!

Sleight was released on April 28 in the US. For a full list of release dates, see here.