In 1976, former Black Panther Marcus (Anthony Mackie) returns to his Philadelphia neighborhood to attend his father's funeral. Marcus has been away for several years, part of the time spent in prison on gun running charges and part spent wandering the country. Marcus has a reputation for having snitched on a fellow Panther which led to his death when the police tried to arrest him. Marcus's former friend DoRight (Jamie Hector), now a local gangster, and Marcus's brother Bostic (Tariq Trotter), a Black Muslim, are especially displeased by his return.
However, Patricia (Kerry Washington), the widow of the slain Panther, is more welcoming. She is now a lawyer and lives with her daughter Iris in the same house where her husband was killed. Her younger cousin Jimmy (Amari Cheatom) struggles to make a living with odd jobs, and begins to become more enamored of the Panthers after being harassed by the police. Increasingly hostile to the police, he becomes involved when some men sent by DoRight shoot out the back window of a police car.
Meanwhile, although no one else can understand it, Patricia grows closer to Marcus and when he is kicked out of his brother's home she invites him to stay with her, citing that he will be a positive male influence for her daughter. When Iris grows curious about what happened to her father, Patricia tearfully explains how he had murdered a police officer in retaliation for the killing of two Panthers. She explains that the police arrested her and Marcus tells Iris that he told them where her father was in order to save Patricia from going to jail and keep Iris out of the foster care system.
Wanting to hold DoRight responsible for the shooting of the police car, but lacking evidence, a police officer David Gordon (Wendell Pierce) orders Marcus to plant a gun in DoRight's bar so they can arrest him. Marcus is reluctant, but Gordon insists, threatening to reveal to the neighborhood that it was actually Patricia who had informed on her husband's location and that Marcus had taken the heat for her. Marcus goes to DoRight's bar but refuses to plant the gun.
Meanwhile, Jimmy, who has bought a gun and decked himself out in Panther style beret and jacket, approaches the cop who had harassed him earlier and shoots him. Jimmy flees to his cousin's house, but when the police show up outside, she forces him to leave as she stonewalls the police. Later, the police find Jimmy hiding in a wooded area and shoot him. After this, Marcus asks Patricia to leave Philly with him and put the past behind her. She refuses, and he leaves alone.
Filming took place in summer 2009 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Director Tanya Hamilton said of the film; "There's a distinct lack of content specific to what it is to be a black American, the variations in that experience, what life is like for people who are ordinary. Those are the stories I want to tell."[1]
Tanya Hamilton has explained that the story, which took her 10 years to finish, was based on her creative ideas mixed with historical facts: "I liked weaving this world of fiction and pieces of fact, but I didn't want to feel like I was getting it wrong, so I just did my thing. It's really just about people, and that I thought I could understand."[2]
Night Catches Us debuted at the 26th Sundance Film Festival,[4] and has since received positive critical reviews. Melissa Anderson of The Village Voice said "Tanya Hamilton's striking debut is the rare American-independent film to go beyond the private dramas of its protagonists, imagining them as players in broader historical moments..."[5] The film holds an 81% on Rotten Tomatoes from 57 critics, indicating positive reviews.
In the late 1960s, revolution seemed to be in the air. Not a revolt powerful enough to topple the government, but one intense enough to threaten its expectations. Then the war was over, the draft was ended, and the moment had passed. Night Catches Us takes place in Philadelphia of 1976 when the Black Panthers are still alive in the memory...
The film leads to no showy conclusion, no spectacular climax. It is about movement possible within the soul even in difficult times. The writer-director, Tanya Hamilton, faces the problem of all directors of period films, and solves them here by re-creating the Black Panther period in B&W news photos. That's about right. Even a few years later, that's somehow how it's remembered in the mind. The Panthers feeding kids breakfast. The Panthers in their black berets. The fiercely identical anger and resolve in their faces. All over with. Leaving Marcus and Patricia to get on with things.[6]
