A man possessed by the spirit of road rage pulls a dangerous manoeuvre on frazzled, struggling mother, Janiyah ( Taraji P. Henson ), after she absent-mindedly cuts him off in traffic. She is too focused on heading to the bank, and then to her daughter’s school, to make overdue payments with money she doesn’t have.
Once her car stops spinning, the man is gone, but her engine won’t start. The kind of rain that only Hollywood can produce pours down.
Out of the unforgiving gray abyss, a female police officer approaches. Janiyah counts her lucky stars. Finally, after a morning stacked with unkind customers and a dictatorial boss, someone is ready to hear her side of the story.
But the enraged man reappears next to the uniformed officer. “You didn’t know I was a cop, did you?” he spits at Janiyah. “Make her suffer,” the angry man demands of the officer.
It’s safe to say this is probably the worst day of Janiyah’s life.
She is a single parent living in an apartment, the rent for which she cannot afford. This robs her of her agency, from making big life decisions to complaining to the landlord that her upstairs neighbour won’t stop blasting Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day”.
For those familiar with filmmaker Tyler Perry , Straw may come as a surprise. The prolific multi-hyphenate pumps out Adam Sandler -esque slapstick comedies almost yearly. They often operate on such silly premises that they make network sitcoms look like War and Peace.
People love ’em.
Here, Perry trades his jokes for godly judgment, cut-throat poetic justice, irony, social commentary, and life or death stakes. Janiyah is no doubt immensely sympathetic, and Henson’s performance (as well as Sherri Shepherd’s) is full of welcome turns, but, to put it simply, the first act of this film is a real bummer. It feels like an experiment to see how long ,and through what turmoil, audiences are willing to accompany a lead character, or beloved actress.
Admittedly, this is not a perfect film. There are noticeable drawbacks in the casting of the minor characters and the plastic dialogue (“If anything goes wrong, it’s your ass!”) provided to them. There are also a few hackneyed plot moments. For example: A TV magically goes from muted to full volume in order for the characters to hear a news anchor provide relevant exposition.
What saves Straw from being an all-out downer is an explosiveness poised beneath every heavy sigh and tearful eye. It’s not quite Falling Down , but it pulls from the same reservoir of deep individual pain, and showcases the same societal apathy towards it. In 2025, Perry’s look at this subject may actually be even more relevant than the 1993 Michael Douglas film.
Ultimately, the joy of Straw is seeing how Perry ups the ante in his warped, hyper-tense world.
Suffice it to say, ” It Was a Good Day ” has no place there.
