Review: Cadillac Records

Based on a true story, "Cadillac Records" is the story of the Chicago-based record label Chess Records, which brought the blues to the masses in the 1940s and eventually called itself home to legendary artists like Etta James, Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. The film unfolds over somewhere in the vicinity of two decades, following label founder Leonard Chess (Adrian Brody) and the various artists he signed. The primary players are Waters (Jeffery Wright), Little Walter (Columbus Short) and Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), with Berry (Mos Def) and James (Beyonce Knowles) entering the picture later.

I'm not sure how much of the story told here has been documented in the past, to be honest, which is probably a large part of why I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Seeing Muddy Waters as a debt-ridden womanizer or Etta James as a heroin addict, while kind of like watching "The Wizard of Oz" knowing Judy Garland was a drunk, makes for compelling viewing. Perhaps the most heartbreaking part of all is the decline of Little Walter, because as the film tells it, his friendship with Waters led him astray, and after being introduced to the drink, he got into drugs and squandered his career in the process.

The film falls into a large amount of cliches (the saintly wife who turns a blind eye to her philandering husband, the power of respect and tradition over all else), but unlike many music biopics, it never feels factory-made. This is wholly because of the casting depth present. Wright plays Waters as a man who lost all perspective upon finding success; he squandered all his money to the point that even when the label was folding under Chess, Waters was still asking him for money to cover child support and his mortgage. The film's title is also telling, as it refers to Chess' habit of purchasing a Cadillac for every new artist signed to the label.

The film's weakest point is its third act, in which the part of the story surrounding Etta James takes over the film. Given that Beyonce is credited as an executive producer, this shouldn't be all that shocking. However, the film loses momentum when all the other characters are temporarily forsaken to follow Chess' budding romance with James, up until he met his untimely demise. In general, the film is one of those Great American Sagas, the story in which a bunch of people that came from nothing rose to something, and then threw it all away without planning for the future. To quote Billy Joel, "I guess that's why they call it the blues.'