Take some punk rock, some rap, the NBA playoffs and the story of a retired hitman played by Pedro Pascal, mix it all up into four intertwined stories– three based on actual facts – and you get Freaky Tales, an ode to the Bay Area city set in May of 1987.
Fresh off their stint on Captain Marvel, along with several revered indie films including Half Nelson, it’s the latest from the writer-director team of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden.
The film is narrated by rapper Too Short and gets its title from a song on his 1987 gold record.
“Oakland in ’87 was hella wild,” he says as the pumped up action begins and takes on shades of Pulp Fiction, an obvious inspiration for the filmmakers.
Too Short also has a cameo as a cop, and a younger version of himself is played by DeMario Symba Driver.
Each of the four anthology-like segments features its own brand of drama, and I was particularly taken by the one involving the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Playoffs against the Los Angeles Lakers, who would of course go on to win the championship.
Have you heard about the ring of South American criminals targeting homes of athletes to burglarize while they are away at games? Well, a crooked cop version of this type of criminal enterprise was going on in Oakland, specifically targeting Golden State point guard Sleepy Floyd, played by Jay Ellis.
In the game’s fourth quarter, he scored 29 points, a postseason record that stands to this day.
Floyd was described by a sportscaster as playing so magically that it was like he was “unconscious, and going to another realm.”
In the film, Floyd does commercials for a fake mindfulness camp called Psytopics, where campers can train their brains to battle inner and outer demons. For the player, this apparently includes taking on the likes of Laker greats Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson.
But the rest of his record-setting magical night on the court turns into a nightmare when he returns to his Bay Area home.
The theme running through all of the segments is an underdog fighting the power and winning. Emotions run high when the underdog is a large group of people, in this case punk rockers who also espouse peace, love and understanding. That’s all laid to waste when they’re confronting by a group of neo-Nazis out to destroy them.
Like I said, the underdog is going to win, with glorious revenge as the trophy. It’s reason enough to go see Freaky Tales.
