Mark Reviews Movies: EMERGENCY

Emergency, Amazon Studios

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | May 19, 2022

The three young men could call 9-1-1. That would be the obvious solution under certain circumstances. Maybe it would have been the correct decision here, but director Carey Williams and screenwriter K.D. Dávila know that, for these characters and in these particular circumstances, there's an inherent risk within the seemingly obvious and correct. Their film Emergency finds humor, suspense, and a bit of tragedy in that sad truth.

This story is set exclusively on a university campus and within the college town surrounding it. It involves a trio of friends, each of them planning for a night of partying in their respective ways. Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) is a science whiz, working on a thesis project with bacteria and on the path to obtaining his doctorate from an Ivy League university, once his time at this school is finished. He hasn't told that last part to his best friend Sean (RJ Cyler), who's happy enough to graduate, find a job, and move into an apartment with Kunle, just as they share living space now with a third roommate (We'll get to him in a bit).

At the start, Dávila simply gives us a strong sense of this friendship—how easily they relate to each other, how comfortable they are to talk about ex-girlfriends or a classmate Kunle hopes could be his girlfriend, how their differences in long-term goals don't seem to be coming between them. Beneath that, of course, is the secret of Kunle's admission to another school and the inevitable fact that they won't be able to get that apartment together after graduation. Deeper than that, though, is distinction of experience, which also doesn't come between them—until those unlucky circumstances and a difficult decision forces them to confront just how different their lives have been.

Kunle and Sean are young Black men. This doesn't quite fit into the former's thinking. He's the son of immigrants from Africa, yes, but he's also the child of successful doctors, who have given him every opportunity and expect just as much, if not more, from their son.

In an early scene that subtly establishes just how different Kunle and Sean's experiences have been, the two sit in a class while a professor discusses a particular racial epithet. In the aftermath of the increasing discomfort (The teacher keeps saying the word and eventually singles out the only two Black people in the class—our protagonists—for their thoughts), it comes up that Kunle has never had that word directed at him in real life. Sean's smiling, dismissive shrug at this information lets us know his experience.

It's little wonder, then, that, when he and Sean discover an unconscious white girl (played by Maddie Nichols) on their living room floor, Kunle's first instinct is to call 9-1-1. Additionally, it's little wonder the Sean disagrees.

In fact, neither Sean nor their nerdy, introverted roommate Carlos (Sebastian Chacon), who's of Hispanic heritage, thinks calling the police is a smart idea. This girl could just be drunk. She also could have been drugged at a nearby frat party.

What are the cops going to think when they show up to see two young Black men, a Hispanic guy, and a white girl who's dressed for a party, passed out on the floor, and possibly drugged against her will? The three friends know they had nothing to do with her current state. On a campus and in a town where the overwhelming majority of the population doesn't have their skin tone, though, are they going to be able to make a convincing argument of the actual truth?

The rest of the plot here is an extended series of misadventures, mistakes and misunderstandings, driven by both Kunle's instinct to help this girl and Sean's understandable skepticism about how people will perceive the trio if they do try to help. The three friends arrive at a string of compromises along the way: trying to return her, unseen, at the frat party and, then, getting her to the local hospital.

Dávila and Williams structure and play this material as a comedy of errors, because every intended or unintended stop on the way results in some barrier to their plan. It's funny, to be sure, because the film has done the work of establishing Kunle's decency (Watkins excels in this regard and even more later, when the character's beliefs are forced to be questioned), Sean's cynicism (Cyler shows skill as both high-as-a-kite comic relief and a righteously jaded figure), and the authentic friendship between the two. Helping matters quite a bit is the anxious and amiable Carlos, who can see both sides of the argument, helps the girl in the backseat of Sean's van while the two friends sit up front and debate between stops, and plays both cheerleader and counselor to Kunle and Sean, as the mission becomes increasingly complicated.

Most of those complications, of course, have to do with external prejudice—from a watchful woman, who makes assumptions about Sean's presence in her neighborhood (The "Black Lives Matter" sign on the front lawn is an ironic kicker), to the unconscious girl's older sister Maddie (Sabrina Carpenter), who ignored her underage sister at the party for a couple hours and, after tracking the sister's cellphone, concludes that three guys from "the hood" have abducted her. None of this element is meant to be funny, except in our knowledge of how wrong those assumptions are, but there's still a clever balance in juxtaposing the intrinsic absurdity of racism with the absurd comedy of how the plan constantly goes wrong.

The most vital balance, perhaps, is how Emergency accepts and acknowledges that both of its protagonists are right. That's a solid formula for both conflict and comedy, but the tragedy here is that, ultimately, one of them is more right than the other.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products