S.W.’s Scores
Continuity
+6
Entertainment
+4
Rewatchability
+3
CastMahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Trevante Rhodes, Ashton Sanders, André Holland
StreamingNetflix, Max
S.W.’s Verdict
Jenkins tells one life in three chapters and makes each chapter feel like a different film about the same wound. The boy becomes the teenager becomes the man, and the armor gets thicker while the person inside gets quieter. The cinematography does more emotional work than the dialogue. Miami has never looked this beautiful or this cruel. It is a film about tenderness surviving in places designed to kill it, told so quietly you have to lean in to hear it.