| Mea Culpa | |
|---|---|
 Release poster | |
| Directed by | Tyler Perry |
| Written by | Tyler Perry |
| Produced by |
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| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Cory Burmester |
| Edited by | Larry Sexton |
| Music by |
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Production company | |
| Distributed by | Netflix |
Release date |
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Running time | 120 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Mea Culpa is a 2024 American legal thriller film written and directed by Tyler Perry. The film stars Kelly Rowland as a criminal defense attorney, who takes the case of an artist (played by Trevante Rhodes), who is accused of murdering his girlfriend. The film also stars Sean Sagar, Nick Sagar, RonReaco Lee, Shannon Thornton, and Angela Robinson. The film was released by Netflix on February 23, 2024.
Plot
Chicago-based Mea Harper and her husband Kal are seeing a marital counselor for infidelity and his extremely overbearing mother Azalia. At a restaurant to celebrate the matriarch's birthday, the older woman tirelessly undercuts her.
Mea's brother-in-law, assistant district attorney Ray Hawthorne, loudly declares he must unload paintings his wife Charlise got from charismatic artist Zyair Malloy as he is set to prosecute him for murdering his girlfriend Hydie.
Mea is a defense lawyer who Zyair approaches to take on his case. Not respecting boundaries, he barges in to her law offices without an appointment to convince her. Zyair insists that Ray hates him, but claims he doesn't know why. Mea promises to look over his case and get back to him.
After Mea and Charlise's boxing class, she reveals she is considering taking on Zyair's defense. Charlise wants her to promise she won't, but she doesn't. Then Kal sees her reading Zyair's file and demands she not take it. Mea points out he's been unemployed eight months, so has no leverage in stopping her from taking the case.
Not only did Kal lose his job as an anesthesiologist due to drug and alcohol abuse, but Mea gives Ray money each month to help pay for insurance-less Azalia's cancer treatments. She gives him the option to let her consider Zyair's case or tell his unemployment secret to his family, so he backs off.
To avoid the paparazzi that plague him, Mea visits Zyair in his loft-artist studio. He tells her about his relationship with Hydie, a Mexican he met waiting tables in Italy. They had an intense six months which abruptly ended when she vanished.
Mea shares with Zyair the overwhelming case the prosecution has against him, including copious amounts of blood that match Hydie's type, skull fragments and her DNA. When she presses him to explain it, it upsets him. Mea goes on to show Zyair a video message by Hydie, supposedly fearing he might kill her and finally mentions a $3 million life insurance policy. Both of these he finds ludicrous.
Azalia and the rest of the family swarm in on Mea to openly pressure her to not take on Zyair's case, as Ray has decided to run for mayor. This solidifies her determination to defend him. After a conversation between Mea, Ray and the judge who will oversee the case, he allows for both in-laws to be involved.
Meeting with her private investigator friend Jimmy, Mea gets him to question Zyair and he concurs that he can't read him either. He continues to Mexico to research Hydie. Meanwhile, as her marriage with Kal starts to fizzle out, Mea starts to find herself attracted to Zyair.
Mea and Zyair sleep together after she is mistakenly led to believe by Jimmy that Kal is seeing another woman, when he was actually visiting Azalia at a hotel room where she is recovering from chemotherapy. Disgusted with herself, Mea announces to Zyair that she's passing him to another lawyer.
Distraught, Mea tells Jimmy, who convinces her to talk with the prosecution's character witness against Zyair. The Evervine Gallery owner Reneé is the older woman who'd discovered him. Mae is sickened upon hearing of how he seduced her, as it was exactly the same as with her. She confirms it upon discovering several portraits of other women under her own hanging above his bed.
Needing to clear her head after being forced to confess to the affair, Mea goes to the Dominican Republic and finds Hydie working as a maid at a resort. Although she can't get her to talk, Mea tries to contact Ray to get investigators to track her down and get Zyair out of jail, as he'd entered a plea bargain.
Ray convinces Mea to return to his suburban Chicago home, where she gets a message from Jimmy revealing that Azalia was lying about having cancer. It turns out she and Ray cooked up a whole scheme against Zyair as he had an affair with Charlise.
Azalia stabs Charlise dead, so Mea then hurries out of the house while being pursued by Ray and Azalia. She jumps into Ray's pickup truck, while Azalia gets on its hood. Mea kills her by crashing the pickup truck into a tree.
Mea runs into Kal on the road, who she soon learns was also in on the scheme and plans to keep her in line through violence. She responds by unbuckling his seatbelt and making him drive into the path of a tractor trailer truck, causing him to fly through the windshield and die.
Ray is arrested and Zyair is exonerated. He publicly thanks Mea and privately asks to see her again, but she ignores him.
Cast
- Kelly Rowland as Mea
- Trevante Rhodes as Zyair
- Nick Sagar as Ray
- Sean Sagar as Kal
- RonReaco Lee as Jimmy
- Shannon Thornton as Charlise
- Kerry O'Malley as Azalia
- Arianna Barron as Jenna
- Connor Weil as Bobby
- Angela Robinson as Renee
Production
In February 2023, it was reported that Kelly Rowland would produce and star in the legal thriller Mea Culpa written, produced, and directed by Tyler Perry.[2][3] Trevante Rhodes, Sean Sagar, Nick Sagar and RonReaco Lee were also cast.[4] Principal photography began on March 6, 2023, in Atlanta at the Tyler Perry Studios,[5] with a few days in Chicago, and wrapped on March 26.[6][7]
Release
Mea Culpa premiered at the Paris Theater in New York City on February 15, 2024.[8] It was released by Netflix on February 23, 2024.[9]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 23% of 22 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Neither campy enough to qualify as a guilty pleasure nor exciting enough to hold up as a thriller, Mea Culpa is a sorry entry in the Tyler Perry filmography."[10] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 33 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[11]
Lisa Kennedy of The New York Times describe the film "willfully steamy, decidedly silly thriller". The writer reflected that Rowland "commits to the thankless task of playing a smart woman gone stupid" while Rhodes "can't do much with Zyair, whose affect is more flat than seductive".[12] Murtada Elfadl of Variety wrote that "many will write it off as shlock, and yet, there's something admirable about a filmmaker who knows exactly what his audience wants." Even if "Rowland and Rhodes have no chemistry" and the scenes don't show "anything resembling real life", Edfadl affirmed that the film "should work for anyone familiar with Perry's oeuvre".[13]
References
- ^ "Mea Culpa (18)". BBFC. February 22, 2024. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
- ^ Vlessing, Etan (February 23, 2023). "Kelly Rowland to Star in Tyler Perry's Mea Culpa for Netflix". The Hollywood Reporter.
- ^ Jackson, Angelique (February 23, 2023). "Tyler Perry and Kelly Rowland Team Up for Mea Culpa at Netflix". Variety.
- ^ Grobar, Matt (February 23, 2023). "Kelly Rowland, Trevante Rhodes & Others Set For New Tyler Perry Netflix Film Mea Culpa". Deadline Hollywood.
- ^ "Mea Culpa 2024 Parent Guide – Parent Guilding". January 29, 2024. Retrieved January 29, 2024.
- ^ Roche, Barbara (February 9, 2023). "Tyler Perry feature Mea Culpa will film in Chicago". Reel Chicago News.
- ^ "Tyler Perry, Kelly Rowland Wrap Chicago Filming of Mea Culpa". Screen. March 9, 2023.
- ^ Denis, Kyle (February 16, 2024). "Beyoncé Supports Kelly Rowland at the 'Mea Culpa' Premiere: 'Dats My Best Friend!'". Billboard. Retrieved February 22, 2024.
- ^ Sandwell, Ian (February 23, 2024). "Tyler Perry's Netflix erotic thriller Mea Culpa has a wild ending". Digital Spy. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
- ^ "Mea Culpa". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
- ^ "Mea Culpa". Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Retrieved March 1, 2024.
- ^ Kennedy, Lisa (February 23, 2024). "'Mea Culpa' Review: Who's Really to Blame, and for What?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
- ^ Elfadl, Murtada (February 23, 2024). "'Mea Culpa' Review: Tyler Perry's 1980s-Style Erotic Thriller Serves Up Guilty Pleasures to His Fans". Variety. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
External links
This page was last edited on 10 April 2024, at 11:53