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Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for “Mickey Hardaway,” the feature film debut of Marcellus Cox, taking on the systemic mental health dysfunction in America’s black communities. In select theaters on August 9th, with digital download available September 1st.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

Rashad Hunter is Mickey Hardaway, a talented artist from a working class family, which includes his no nonsense but addicted-to-anger father Randall (David Chattam). Dad doesn’t believe in art as a career, and physically/mentally abuses Mickey, until he runs away to art college at age 18. He barely gets by until an opportunity comes to syndicate his cartoons. At the same time he meets a woman named Grace (Ashley Parchment) and begins therapy with Dr. Harden (Stephen Colfield Jr.). Can they heal a broken soul in time?

”Mickey Hardaway” is in select theaters on August 9th, with digital download available September 1st. Featuring Rashad Hunter,...

The decision to go to therapy is so often the sticking point in a journey to recovery that when Mickey Hardaway (Rashad Hunter) eagerly agrees to the suggestion, made by his girlfriend Grace (Ashley Parchment), one might think that his struggles are coming to an end. As we will learn from subsequent flashbacks, Grace has been worried about his drinking and signs of depression. He’s just lost his first real job as an artist and feels as if he is condemned to failure. He’s young and talented and it shouldn’t take that much to turn him around – but there’s a darkness calling to Mickey, and he could all too easily find himself going down a dangerous road.

Adapted by Marcellus Cox from his 2020 short, and featuring a breakout performance by the same young star, this is palpably a first feature, but there are ways in which it shines.

We live in an era where people are being more than nudged to expand their awareness and explore their internal worlds. That may have been the juicy invitation — or a bit of cosmic paradox — spawned by the pandemic. Whether most people took that invitation to look inward to grow or evolve to some degree is still up for debate.

Still, a quick scan of some of the recent films to emerge from filmmakers near and far, and you can’t help but wonder if there was something hanging in the air these last few years (see also The Passenger). Themes related to trauma, grief, and abuse have found their way into many films and episodic TV storylines. One thing is clear: we’re all going through something. Or have. And that’s why the new indie film Mickey Hardaway arrives at the perfect time.

This is one of the finest,...