Director: Bill Duke
Stars: Morris Chestnut, Taraji P. Henson, Maeve Quinlan, Kevin Hart, Jenifer Lewis
At one point a happily married couple, Dave and Clarice (Chestnut and Henson respectively) seem to have different ideas on what happiness is. With different goals in mind, their marriage soon reaches a breaking point and they have to re-evaluate what they want from love and each other.
Not Easily Broken is billed on Netflix as a faith-based drama and while there are elements of faith I didn’t feel that they were overbearing, not like in Left Behind. It was mostly about how two people deal with the challenges that a marriage brings when they have differing outlooks on life.
It does have the problem that comes with these films where I wonder why they got together in the first place, because although they look happy on their wedding day the film only presents them as a couple that basically snipes at each other, and it’s a wonder they made it as far as they did. It also suffers from its characterization because Clarice and her mother are too unsympathetic. A big argument rages because Dave spends too much time coaching a little league team for kids, teaching them how to be mature with good lessons like how there’s only one race – the human race. All the while she’s busy moaning about her award ceremonies and the fact that he’s never around to spend time with her. The character comes across as entirely unlikeable and its only due to Henson’s natural charisma that she manages to salvage something from the character.
There is an attempt at fleshing out her and her mother, but it comes far too late in the film to have any impact.
Despite that I found myself liking the film. It is predictable and it doesn’t offer anything new or groundbreaking, but it moves along at a good pace and the problems that crop up are things that happen in everyday life. Chestnut anchored the film and I enjoyed his performance in particular as he did a good job at showing a man whose patience was running out.
It’s not in the upper echelon of movies by any means, but it is watchable and entertaining so if you’re looking for something relaxing to watch this film is a good one to pick.
