Director Joe Manduke and screenwriter Leonard Lamensdorf probably could not have predicted that 1975's Cornbread, Earl and Me would prove to be just as relevant four decades after its release. In his feature debut, Laurence Fishburne plays Wilford, a Chicago kid who looks up to older teen Cornbread (real-life NBA player Keith Wilkes). Drawing from Ronald Fair's 1966 novel Hog Butcher, Manduke sketches in the contours of an inner-city block where everybody knows everybody, such as numbers runner One-Eye (Antonio Fargas). Wilford and his friend Earl (Tierre Turner) like to watch Cornbread play ball, but they've only got two weeks to learn all they can before the latter heads off to college. One rainy afternoon, however, cops mistake Cornbread for an armed rape suspect and shoot him dead, and instead of standing around helplessly, the neighbors yell and scrap with the police. Cornbread's parents file a civil suit, but police investigators intimidate every witness, and at the inquest everyone swears that they didn't see anything—except for one brave soul. While this feels a bit like wish fulfillment, the film also illustrates how one ordinary citizen can make a difference, especially when he has an advocate like Moses Gunn as an attorney on his side. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)
Cornbread, Earl and Me
Olive, 96 min., PG, DVD: $19.95, Blu-ray: $29.95 Volume 31, Issue 5
Cornbread, Earl and Me
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