THE BOOK OF CLARENCE

Earlier this year I watched director Jeymes Samuel’s debut feature The Harder They Fall and loved the sense of style and energy that he brought to the Western Genre. So I was quietly optimistic that I would enjoy his sophomore feature too and excited to see what he could bring to the biblical epic.

And, in the main, this quiet optimism was rewarded as I was treated to another stylish, occasionally laugh out loud funny, romp through A.D. 33 Jerusalem.

The titular Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield) is a down-on-his-luck drug dealer who finds himself owing the local loan shark Jedediah the Terrible (Eric Kofi-Abrefa). 

To earn the money to pay back his debt he and his ever-willing friend Elijah (RJ Cyler) he attempts to capitalise on Jesus’s (Nicholas Pinnock) success and pretend to be a messiah himself.

It is a nice twist on traditional bible stories and the setup does provide a lot of fun moments along the way. There is some enjoyable action, a fast paced chariot race, and - somewhat out of the blue - the occasional song and dance number, and Jeymes Samuel’s snappy and breezy direction allows all of this to feel natural.

It does, at times, struggle a little for identity however. The film is set over three distinguishable chapters, and in each the tone shifts, leaving you with a film that can’t quite decide what it wants to be.

There is a feeling that it is trying to have its cake and eat it too, trying to appeal to broader - disparate - audiences, and in doing so dilutes the things that are really enjoyable about it.

Jeymes Samuel has proven in his first two films that he is someone worth getting excited about. Someone who has a uniquely distinctive flair to his writing, and to his directing.

With The Book of Clarence he just about manages to overcome the difficult second film obstacle with one that is a huge amount of fun, even if it does struggle to identify exactly what it wants to be.