Like a high octane Driving Miss Daisy in reverse, GREEN BOOK puts the pedal to the metal in a road movie that is a profound, profane and profusely powerful foray into the freeways of friendship, where race and class, and the inherent bigotries, are by passed.
When Frank Anthony Vallelonga, aka Tony Lip, a New York City bouncer from an Italian-American neighbourhood in The Bronx, is hired to drive and protect Dr. Don Shirley, a world-class Black pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South of America, they must rely on “The Green Book “– a travel guide to safe lodging, dining and business options for African Americans during the era of segregation and Jim Crow laws – to steer them to places where Shirley will not be refused service, humiliated, or threatened with violence.
Life’s a bitumen and when you’re out on your asphalt, it’s good to have someone watching your back. Long road trips can be aggravating or they can be bonding, and in GREEN BOOK we get both, the former evolving and developing into the latter.
Set against the backdrop of a country grappling with the valour and volatility of the Civil Rights Movement, these two men from vastly different backgrounds are confronted with racism and danger, and comforted by generosity, kindness and humour, much of it welling from in themselves.
What begins as two-month journey of necessity morphs into a friendship that challenge long-held assumptions, pushes past their seemingly insurmountable differences, and embrace their shared humanity.
Penned by Tony Lip’s son, Nick Vallelonga, the story of GREEN BOOK is part of his family’s folklore, like an eight week Road to Damascus epiphany for his father that opened his eyes for the first time to the plight of African Americans in the South, and the barrage of humiliations and sometimes homicides visited upon Black people by racist laws and white privilege. Jim Crow laws restricted where Black people could eat, sleep, sit, shit, shop, and walk.
Viggo Mortensen is superb as the garrulous and charismatic, Tony Lip, who earned his nickname for his reputation of being able to persuade anybody of just about anything. He’s a brute, blunt instrument but possessed of a sense of fair play. Street smart and fists savvy, his cultural misconceptions are ignorant not malevolent.
Mahershala Ali is marvellous as the cultured, dignified Don Shirley, meticulous in his portrayal of a meticulous musician, highly educated and erudite man, struggling with his own identity within the divided states of America.
Directed by Peter Farrelly, GREEN BOOK is one of those rare films that seamlessly mix drama and comedy, have something important to say, and have that feel good quotient without the unctuous slick of saccharine or sentimentality.
