'They Cloned Tyrone' Review: Jamie Foxx and John Boyega in a Sci-Fi Sociological Nightmare

In America today, nobody has a conspiracy theory lock. It's become the air we breathe, the Kool-Aid we drink, the bunny ideology that defines too many of us. Yet conspiracy theories come in many different shapes and sizes. Many are false, some are true. Many are bat mad, some are more than plausible. All of them, in one way or another, function as metaphors: for the forces (in government, corporations, etc.) that collude to hide things from us, for the tantalizing grim truth that we are not allowed to see.

"They Cloned Tyrone" is a nightmarish, slow-burning inner-city sci-fi thriller that plays on the spirit of conspiracy theory that has often thrived - with justification - within black culture. The Tuskegee Experiment was a conspiracy that happened; its horrific impact on the hearts and minds of African Americans is beyond measure. And by the 1970s, the belief that the CIA, linked by the Vietnam War to the Golden Triangle (the source of most of the world's heroin), was dumping drugs in America's inner cities was a notion that gained traction, culminating a decade later in the theory that the CIA was the hidden force behind the crack epidemic.

These theories, and the palpable sense of just because it's extreme doesn't mean it's not true behind them, are the paranoid deep-roots of "They Cloned Tyrone," a film that takes things to extremes but still wants to touch a nerve of reality.

It begins as the grounded drama of three low-level criminals. There's John Boyega as Fontaine, a drug dealer who, according to one character, never laughed, and we watch Boyega, sullenly deadpan in his gold grillz (he gives a quietly implosive performance unlike anything he's done before), and we can believe that to be true. There's Jamie Foxx as Slick Charles, a pimp clad in a sculpted "fro and paisley" bathrobe who's seen better days ("I was a pimp of the year at the 1995 International Players Ball!"), and who rules his perch with an ice-cold bravery that, as the wily Foxx plays it, is as entertaining as it is compelling in its petty megalomania. And there's Teyonah Parris as Yo-Yo, a sex worker who makes a living under Charles, and stands up to him in as hostile and rococoly obscene a way as he does with her.

Filmmaker Jule Taylor has never directed a feature film before (he was co-writer of "Creed II"), but he directs scenes with a visually impressive vibe of funky sadness. The dialogue, which he wrote with Tony Rettenmaier, is quick and lively in its salty dog ​​rage. And the actors are so good that I would have been happy if the film had simply followed the daily fate of these three characters.

For a moment, it immerses us in the day-to-day life of life in a neighborhood called The Glen, as Fontaine performs his morning ritual of buying a 40 and a scratch card and pouring a glass of beer into the mug of an old homeless man, Frog (Leon Lamar), who offers him a daily aphorism ("It's in the water, young blood", he says - talk about conspiracy!). David Alan Grier comes across as a full-throttle gospel preacher, and he's so mesmerizing that for about five minutes he hijacks the film.

But the very title of "They Cloned Tyrone," an allusion to Erykah Badu's 1997 live concert track "Tyrone," lets you know it won't just be a slice of cowl life. There are deadly fights over money, and a key character ends up dead, shot multiple times in the chest.

One ​​scene later, he's alive and well.

Dark deeds are in sight. But who does what to whom? Let's just say there's a plot at hand that makes "Get Out" look like an amateur parlor trick. At one point, the three characters enter a deserted trap house, only to discover a gleaming elevator that takes them to a lab below. There, they find a white powder that looks like cocaine (but isn't), along with a white geek in a white coat and hair that looks...