Straw

Set in the same twisty world of the M. Night Shyamalan classic Sixth Sense and Gothika, starring Halle Berry, but far inferior in terms of storytelling and character-building, Tyler Perry’s Straw, nevertheless, makes for a semi-engaging watch. Powered by a central act from Taraji P. Henson, whose character of an underprivileged single mother struggling to stay afloat in a world that is insensitive — and, more pathetically, blind — to her pain and plight, the 105-minute film touches upon some pertinent issues, even as it shows Janiyah’s (Henson) world unravelling in the course of a single day. Those familiar with Perry’s style of filmmaking would know that everything that the actor-director says is always on the nose. Racial discrimination, the trials of the working class, the problems that those who are failed by the system face on a daily basis… Straw touches upon all of them, but with the kind of heavy-handed treatment and dense literal rather than metaphorical depiction that we have seen in Perry’s previous overwrought dramas.