yle="color: rgb(17 17 17); font-family: Helvetica Arial sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255 255 255);"> In the summer of ’76 as President Jimmy Carter pledges to give government back to the people tensions run high in a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood where the Black Panthers once flourished. When Marcus returns—having bolted years earlier—his homecoming isn’t exactly met with fanfare. His former movement brothers blame him for an unspeakable betrayal. Only his best friend’s widow Patricia appreciates Marcus’s predicament which both unites and paralyzes them. As Patricia’s daughter compels the two comrades to confront their past history repeats itself in dangerous ways.
yle="color: rgb(17 17 17); font-family: Helvetica Arial sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255 255 255);"> Night Catches Us masterfully reckons with the complexity of its characters’ revolutionary ideologies and internal desires. Bell-bottoms Afros potlucks and Caddies set the scene as the film potently interweaves political media with an evocative soul-inspired score summoning a vivid sense of place and time. The golden light that bathes characters’ faces seems to express the promise—and elusiveness—of the necessary change Marcus and Patricia struggle for so dearly—each by separate means.