Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy has been getting a lot of buzz for the nutty intensity of Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and David Oyewolo’s performances in a deep Southern story about a group of people who work to get a man off death row, only to discover that it may not have been such a good idea:

I like the idea of a death penalty drama that feels no need to make its inmate out to be a saint, or even a particularly nice person, for its characters to believe that he should not be executed. But it seems like a high risk, high reward project. Daniels is good at bringing out wildly individual characters, but this project smothers them in a lot of chicken-fried stereotypes. It remains to see if their individual flavors will be distinguishable amidst the tropes.

I’m excited for Lee Daniels The Paperboy, which explores a wrongful conviction in Florida, and I was intrigued by this little tidbit from The Hollywood Reporter’s Cannes review of the movie: “Working from the well-received 1995 novel by Pete Dexter (Deadwood, Paris Trout), Daniels and Dexter have stuck closely to the book’s storyline in their adaptation but have amped up the racial element by making one major character and two secondary ones black rather than white. This doesn’t create any fundamental differences but does thicken the deck with extra tensions and innuendo.” The value of black directors isn’t just their authority to speak about race in certain ways, but the fact that they can present challenges to default whiteness in a way that white writers or directors may be unable to see. Default whiteness isn’t just lazy. It can flatten a story, or remove opportunities for tension and conversation. If white directors turn characters of color white because they want to cast a certain actor, they may end up with movies that don’t just look more generic but are less powerful.