Every once in a while you hear stories about a Blacklisted screenplay that gets picked up by a studio or individual who intends on making a film of it. They Cloned Tyrone isn’t the most original story you’ll see this year but it has a lot of elements that make it an interesting film. Combined with a great cast of well-known actors everybody knows this movie is one of the weirdest movies you’ll see this year. 

This story takes place in and around Georgia. It starts as a joke as one character in the film puts it. A hooker Yo-yo (Teyonah Parris), a pink Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), and a drug dealer Fontaine also known as Tyrone (John Boyega) walk into a bar. It’s that simple until it gets really weird. And when I say weird, what happened next is that one of the main characters dies and a second version of that character pops up once again. It prompts a question: how did this person come back to life?

The three made characters, including the cloned version of one of them, go on an adventure together trying to investigate how, why, and when this happened. This mystery is a strange one but isn’t anything new to film fans. Cloning in comic books, television shows, and movies has been going on for years now. The way this film does it is what makes it different. This film has an entirely different aesthetic than anything you’ve seen in recent years.

Blaxploitation is a genre that came out mainly in the 70s. It’s a genre mainly focused on Black men and women who are trying to get revenge or fight for their rights against oppressors, mostly white oppressors. Coffee, Shafter, Dolomite,  Super Fly, and Blacula are just a handful of these films that came out back then. This is the latest one from Netflix and directed by Juel Taylor and co-written by Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier.

Another type of film that came out of the past is films that dealt with conspiracy theories and crazy government experiments. These are movies made famous by a bunch of great directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Sydney Pollack, and others. These types of films can get the audience involved in the story and the characters involved. I am a fan of these types of movies. Combine these and the other and you have They Cloned Tyrone.

The film has a lot of various types of production design including crazy sets, classic cars, authentic clothes, hairstyles, and gritty dark cinematography. The look of the movie is right up the angle of anyone who liked those films of the 70s. I just wish there was better lighting during the nighttime sequences. There just wasn’t enough lighting to show completely how beautiful this movie truly was. It was set at night quite frequently and those scenes were very dark. It’s sad because I think the sets and various locations could back be seen in a better light.

In addition to the interesting premise and weird story, there was one main villain in the film.  This villain was played by Keifer Sutherland. He is a typical Southern oppressor. With a Southern accent to boot. In the Atlanta, Georgia area it’s hard not to miss gangbusters and strip clubs on every other corner and this guy took the cake. He was a piece of work. Sutherland played him to the hilt. 

They Cloned Tyrone combines a lot of genres and a good cast of big-name actors to make a fun mystery sci-fi thriller. It has a lot of great below-the-line work from everyone involved in the film. The direction and writing were very good. I just feel the cinematography could have been much better. I watched it on multiple devices and it was still dark on all of them. When a film is set at night and or in the shadows, it needs to be lit better. This is an unacceptable thing when it comes to making movies. People should see this film anyway because the rest of it was fine.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen