Even diehard followers of the tireless Tyler Perry typically want he’d decelerate a bit to give attention to high quality over amount. However Netflix function “Straw” has a cultural pulse-taking urgency that lifts it above his standard run of comedies and melodramatic potboilers, flawed as it’s. Starring Taraji P. Henson as a single mom loaded with extra crises than a girl can bear in at some point — leading to a hostage scenario à la “Canine Day Afternoon” — “Straw” sports activities its writer-director-producer’s acquainted faults.

It’s overloaded with plot contrivance, histrionics and on-the-nose messaging, piling on an excessive amount of of every little thing. But what breaks the camel’s again for this put-upon heroine is an amassed rage that feels significantly tuned to our political second, when to many Individuals it appears societal establishments have ceased to even fake they serve any residents under a slender financial elite. In order it performs out, her meltdown has a cathartic energy that expenses previous Perry’s clumsier dramaturgical impulses. “Straw” is simply too messy to be “good,” precisely — however it has a bitter relevancy, and it really works. 

Inside 20 minutes, Janiyah (Henson) arrives on the requisite why-hast-thou-forsaken-me-God shot, screaming on the digicam overhead. In a quick span since waking, nearly each unhealthy factor potential has occurred to her: She’s suffered sundry petty abuses, been the sufferer of a road-rage accident, had her automotive impounded, misplaced a desperately-needed grocery store job, seen asthmatic daughter Aria (Gabby Jackson) taken away by Little one Companies and been evicted from their dingy condominium for tardy lease. Crawling again to an unsympathetic boss (Glynn Turman) for the paycheck she’s nonetheless owed, she lands in the course of an armed hold-up ending in two fatalities — which isn’t actually her fault, however it certain appears that solution to cops. 

By now rattled previous the purpose of rationality, she returns to a financial institution she’d visited earlier, satisfied that if she will simply money her test, the world might be proper once more. However her very unhealthy luck holds: Workers there assume from Janiyah’s hysterical demeanor (and the robbers’ handgun she’s held onto) that this, too, is a stick-up. In fast succession, the doorway will get locked, a silent alarm triggered and umpteen squad automobiles pull up with sirens screaming within the strip mall car parking zone exterior. Earlier than she’s had time to make clear issues, a TV monitor within the financial institution foyer reveals stay information reportage, casting her because the alleged perpetrator of a hostage disaster the entire metropolis is watching unfold. 

This all happens in such hectic style {that a} half-hour hasn’t handed earlier than you concern “Straw” already maxxing out its quota of yelling, tears and panic. That locations an onerous burden on Henson, doing her appreciable greatest making an attempt to maintain a task whose Job-like travails crank the misery stage to 11 too quickly. There’s additionally a big forged of supporting characters, many known as upon to strike shrill notes of hostility. With little in the best way of associates or household she will depend on, Janiyah has few allies in her life. When she’s out of the blue seen as a harmful legal, the one observers prepared to see previous that snap judgment are department supervisor Nicole (Sherri Shepherd) and Det. Raymond (Teyana Taylor), a policewoman who turns into the chief negotiator. 

Everybody else assumes the worst of her, notably an ill-tempered teller (Ashley Versher) who undermines efforts at a peaceable decision, then the chief (Derek Phillips) of FBI forces, who’s intent on a guns-blazing end. Including extra anxiousness is the idea that Janiyah carries a bomb, when actually the factor with flashing lights and beeping sounds in her daypack is a toddler’s faculty challenge. One other headache for the authorities is {that a} digicam cellphone contained in the financial institution captures her distraught monologue explaining what bought her right here — which will get broadcast on native TV, drawing a crowd of protestors exterior. (That improvement underlines the fact-based “Canine Day” from 50 years in the past as a possible inspiration.) 

“Straw” is hardly Perry at his most indulgent — final yr’s sudsy thriller “Divorce within the Black” was 143 minutes lengthy — but he nonetheless apparently can’t resist shoehorning in each concept that involves thoughts. That makes the movie appear overwrought early on, earlier than it settles considerably into the drawn-out stalemate on the financial institution. Then it upsets the narrative scales once more on the finish, first with a serious twist invalidating a lot of what we’ve beforehand seen, then a intentionally misleading motion sequence. These conceits would possibly work in a unique screenplay, however they really feel wildly gratuitous in a single already so cluttered with hand-wringing injustices and mortal peril. 

Nonetheless, “Straw” succeeds general as a result of we don’t essentially want to seek out Janiyah’s near-ridiculous predicament absolutely credible; it may be accepted as an exaggerated encapsulation of the stress cooker folks like her inhabit each single day. She’s routinely dismissed as lazy, dishonest or simply unhealthy for not rising above her lot … by no means thoughts that she’s working two minimum-wage jobs sans advantages, the shortage of medical health insurance that means she will’t afford all the medication her daughter wants. Poverty’s perpetual debt cycle means she will’t enhance their lives by returning to nursing faculty, both. 

As aged financial institution customer-cum-hostage Isabella (Diva Tyler) notes, “Folks don’t understand how costly it’s to be poor.” When advised but once more that she ought to simply suck it up one way or the other, Janiyah herself laments, “Black ladies all the time have one thing to recover from.” “Straw” could also be hyperbolic and heavy-handed, however it nonetheless packs punch sufficient as a problem from the “have-nots” to the “haves”: You strive residing this manner, and see how simple it’s to higher your self. 

Shot in Georgia as standard, Perry’s newest is one in all his best-crafted in tech and design phrases, with significantly stable work from cinematographer Justyn Moro and editor Nick Coker. His script might go excessive, and a usually adept forged (which additionally consists of distinguished elements for Sinbad, Rockmond Dunbar, Shalet Monique and others) copes variably with its excesses. Lastly, although, the director holds his top-heavy premise collectively simply effectively sufficient to reach at an influence no much less efficient for being characteristically unsubtle.