Cadillac Records, the story of blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters (among other famous blues musicians and singers) and record producer Leonard Chess, comes to Blu-ray looking and sounding great. However, don’t expect it to be truly authentic and historical.
Musical enthusiasts and historians might be a bit disappointed at the liberties this movie takes with actual events, but the acting is superb and if the historical inaccuracies don’t bother you, I would defiantly give it a go.
Jeffery Wright plays Muddy Waters, and it is really his story - his and Leonard Chess’ (played by Adrian Brody) story. Other musicians came into the story, but it mainly revolves around Waters and Chess and the creation and longevity of Chess Records (nicknamed ‘Cadillac Records’ for Chess’ propensity to buy his musicians Cadillacs).
Never mind that Chess Records was actually started by Leonard Chess and his brother…the brother doesn’t come into it.
Jeffery Wright does an excellent job of portraying Muddy, but at times he is very hard to understand. He talks out of the side of his mouth, which the real Muddy might or might not have done, but it is hard to understand him at time as some lines get lost in the mumble.
Wright does this style of speaking through the entire film, and at times it is as if he had cotton stuffed in his cheeks or an invisible cigarette hanging from his mouth. Wright is a very competent actor who does research for his roles, but I don’t know enough about Muddy Waters to be confident that Wright was portraying him as such.
However, Wright did win Best Supporting Actor for the African American Film Critics, so I don’t doubt that his portrayal of Waters was as genuine and authentic as he could possibly make it.
Adrian Brody is also excellent as Leonard Chess, and does a good job of building the frustration involved in keeping his records company going as well as dealing with the various scraps his musicians would get into. (At one point Little Walter takes the doors off of his Cadillac and gets beat up by a cop).
Other musicians that are portrayed in the film are: Little Walter, a hot headed musician that has little self preservation (Columbus Short), Chuck Berry (Mos Def), and the great Etta James (Beyonce Knowles).
One of the most memorable moments of the film comes when Chuck Berry takes the stage and the lines between the young black and white crowd becomes non-existent. Someone says in the film that he destroyed racism with his famous ‘duck walk’.
The film takes us through the journey of success: men who came from nothing having something, and the feeling that they wanted to continue to be successful. To do so in the records market, there was furious competition between musicians, almost to the point of bitter rivalry.
Guns seemed to play an important part in the early days of finding success with these musicians - rival Blues men would try to usurp other bands in different venues to gain the crowd’s attention, or to ‘out play’ the competition.
In one such incident, a gun is fired and you get the feeling “Hey, they were playing around! This is serious stuff!” In another scene, Little Walter stops his Cadillac and shoots a man on the side of road for apparently using his name. My thought then was, “I didn’t know blues music was so violent!”
The 1080p picture will take you on a journey through time. The sets and costumes are amazing and give life to this historical tribute to these great musicians. Filled with memorabilia from the 50s and 60s, as well as great costumes and hair (Wright’s hair seems to get taller as the decades roll by), the Blu-ray experience only adds to what the film has to offer visually.
Cadillac Records [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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