Brother Future (1991)
Copyright by the
Doomster 2004
Rating (1 to 10) : 5
Summary: A hustling streetwise black teenager from modern times gets mysteriously transported back in time to 1822 Charleston, South Carolina.
This is one of those movies where the main character gets sent back thru time and is in a position where he knows about the future and is more technologically advanced than the people of the time. TJ (Phill Lewis) is a streetwise black youth living in modern (circa 1990) Detroit hustling by stealing and selling goods. With his shades, hat, and gaudy clothes, he resembles Deion Sanders when he just entered the NFL. TJ is apathetic about attending school, questioning why it’s so necessary when he is doing better hustling on the streets. While running away from the police one day, he gets hit by a car. When he wakes up, he finds himself in a rural surrounding near Charleston, South Carolina.
TJ is confused when two bounty hunters approach him and arrest him for just being around without a pass – he thinks that he’s still in the 20th century. But he discovers that he’s in antebellum Charleston and experiences a total shock at being dropped in an environment that has completely different norms, laws, and attitudes between blacks and whites than present-day Detroit. For a black youth used to having legal rights, TJ sees that most blacks are slaves with no rights. Even a fundamental right to free movement is not allowed to black slaves - getting caught off the master’s property without a pass is a punishable offense. The biggest surprise seemingly to TJ is that slaves are not allowed to learn to read or write. TJ finds this ironic because back in modern times, he viewed literacy as a useless skill, something that many black slaves valued so highly as to risk their lives to acquire.
TJ experiences it all and sees how so many of the rights that he takes for granted were denied to blacks just 100 years ago. He witnesses slave families being separated as the husband is sold to a different owner than his wife and daughter. TJ himself is sold to a plantation owner, Mr. Cooper, and befriends one of Cooper’s slaves, Josiah. He teaches Josiah how to read and they also plot to try to escape. There is an undercurrent of rebellion among the slaves as some conspire to run away to freedom in the North while others conspire to revolt. Led by a free black named Denmark Vesey, select black slaves from various plantations store arms and plan for the time when they will revolt and set themselves free. Josiah is one of the co-conspirators and thru him, TJ gets caught up in the conspiracy.
Like the other movies of this type, TJ returns to modern times but not before he makes an impact on the possible future. The one uniqueness of this story is that in most other movies of this type, the person from the future is either revered and/or feared because he is more advanced than the people of the time and is viewed as having magical powers. In this one, the time-travelling character is not revered nor feared but treated as a second-class citizen.
Why you should or should not see this movie:
You should watch this if you want to see a contrast between how blacks were treated just 160 years ago to the modern times. Our nation has gone a long way in pursuing our national ideology of “all men are created equal”. Yet we have further to go. This movie would be most beneficial to black youths who don’t realize that the rights and opportunities they take for granted were not (and it was aimed at the black audience). Yet, it could have been done better. I don’t see how TJ’s white slaveowner or others in the Southern power structure could not have thought something was amiss with TJ’s seemingly preternatural intelligence and his strange behavior that was different from other black slaves.
Memorable quotes
Copyright by the Doomster 2004