Same Kind of Different as Me movie review (2017)
Based on the bestselling book, which inspired both a sequel and a children’s adaptation, “Same Kind of Different as Me” is the true story of a wealthy Texas white couple, Ron and Debbie (Greg Kinnear and Renee Zellweger), who befriend a violent homeless man (Djimon Hounsou). He calls himself Suicide, but is actually named Denver. Debut co-writer/director Michael Carney doesn’t have much of an eye for any of this saga, which includes a “Blind Side”-like narrative that transitions into a weepy sickness tale fit for Nicholas Sparks that I won’t spoil, but the true story aspect is a type of preservation itself. It can be hard to disagree with the heart and events of this true tale, except for when the movie reveals itself to be mighty self-congratulatory.
The book, which features the “voices” of Ron and Denver as organized by their co-author Lynn Vincent, makes a point of starting with Denver’s narration before then going to Ron, as Denver shares a horrifying racist episode from his youth that’s featured in the middle of the film. But instead of feeling like the story belongs to both men, this movie is told from Ron’s perspective, framed as the tale of a Texas art dealer who knew a great woman who helped introduce him to a sidekick. Ron is brought into the world of taking care of homeless people as a type of penance after Debbie catches him cheating; she takes him to a shelter in a less-loved part of Fort Worth, which leads to a lot of plainly “nice” scenes in which Debbie and/or Ron interact with homeless people, treat them like human beings. One night, Debbie dreams of walking through a field and seeing a black man, the type of straight-faced narrative detail that proves to be a big deal in a movie like this.
That mental image soon barrels into the movie in the form of Suicide, literally with a baseball bat in hand as he tears up the homeless shelter's cafeteria. Scene-by-scene, as Ron & Debbie reach out to him by acknowledging him and feeding him, the intense man loses the thick exteriors and offers perfect wisdom after perfect wisdom. He is later welcomed into their home, and their social lives. We learn, through monologues accompanied by flashback, about Denver's truly unbelievable past: that he lived in Louisiana and picked cotton in what was essentially slavery, completely removed from the civil rights movement or any such modernity; that he was beaten by KKK members as a teenager, and later went to prison for trying to rob a bus in Shreveport. Hounsou's scraggly voice shares these stories through extensive monologues as Kinnear and Zellweger listen, with Hounsou doling out precise line-reading and tears. True to the hollow cinematic spirit of this movie, Carney can only accompany with bland flashbacks or stubborn modern-day close-ups that soak us in Hounsou’s wet eyes.
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