* * * (out of 4)
You could spin an entire series out of Kasi Lemmons’ The Caveman’s Valentine. Call it Schizo-Detective Stories. Every week, affable homeless person and former classical concert pianist Romulus Ledbetter (Samuel L. Jackson), also known as the Caveman, emerges from his Central Park cave dwelling to sleuth out street justice. All the while, he rants and raves about the distorted radio signals he’s picking up from the top of the Chrysler Building. This New York landmark, as seen from his distorted mind’s eye, is as colorfully lit up as an alien spaceship. With every passing episode, he draws steadily closer to his unseen adversary, Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant. This Moriarty to his Sherlock Holmes controls the international banking system in his wicked plot to take over the world. Meanwhile, old Romulus inadvertently stumbles upon dead junkies, sinister drug dealers, and other assorted villains in his travels. Through luck, pluck, and virtue, he foils their plans every time. Maybe.
In her follow-up to the critically acclaimed Eve’s Bayou, Lemmons again teams with charismatic leading man and co-producer Jackson That’s right, baby. Shaft’s back, but he’s trading in movie star divadom for bona fide acting chops. With tufts of gray beard covering his angry mouth, natty dreadlocks hanging down his shoulders, Jackson stakes out his loopy wild man turf. That’s right, he shouts, spits, curses at the sky, and cringes at beams of green or white light. Never a dull moment with him, is there? Attuned to the “magic realism” of Lemmons’ design, Jackson comfortably overacts design. He often manages to salvage the purple prose of George Dawes Green’s adaptation from his best-selling novel.
One miserably cold night, Caveman Romulus receives a bizarre transmission on his busted, unplugged television. This fuzzy news footage indicates that a murder is committed right outside his humble dwelling. Sure enough, when he takes his morning piss, he discovers the frozen corpse of a young hustler up in a tree. Thinking that he finally has proof that Stuyvesant is preying on the street people, he immediately phones his daughter, Lulu (Aunjanue Ellis, A Map of the World), who happens to be a streetwise uniform cop.
The police would prefer to write it off as drug related, having bigger fish to fry. Romulus, naturally, knows better. The dead boy’s doped-up buddy (Rodney Eastman) spins an elaborate tale to Rom about how several street kids have been manipulated, lured in, and psychologically tortured by a Larry Clark style photographer (impeccably played by Canadian actor Colm Feore). He used them as models for his tormented angel paintings, then tossed them into the trash. Romulus decides to investigate, but before he can snoop around in the artist’s upstate loft during a publicized soiree, he needs a new suit of clothes and a shave. Cue the upscale Six Degrees of Separation "guilty white boy" businessman (Anthony Michael Hall, having a blast) who will set our hero up nicely, as long as he plays a solo piano performance for token amusement. Did I mention that Caveman Rom was a prodigy from Julliard? Yes, indeed, he was. And, oh, can he play to summon the angels and devils, often flapping about in the form of winged seraph dancers (one of the most painfully inflated visual flourishes Lemmons opts for.)
