Top Five

Scenes of people walking and talking have received a bad rap as of late – thanks a bunch, Aaron Sorkin – but when it’s done well, when it’s two interesting people expressing their thoughts and feelings as they stroll around a location that’s lovingly, vividly depicted, it’s entertaining and enlightening. 

Top Five, written and directed by Chris Rock, who also stars, isn’t just walking and talking, but the scenes in which Rock (playing stand-up comedian and movie star Andre Allen on the verge of marriage to a reality TV star and on the verge of releasing a ‘serious’ film that’s going to be a critical and commercial disaster) and Rosario Dawson (as the New York Times reporter spending the day with Andre as she puts together a profile of him) walk around New York City, the lines between interviewer and subject slowly fading as they speak their minds about everything from sobriety (both quit drinking four years earlier) to love to hip hop (the title comes from the characters’ lists of top five hip hop artists), are among the finest in a very fine, very funny, very smart and sensitive film.

Rock has long struggled to bring the bristling energy and crackling intelligence of his stand-up comedy to his onscreen work, but he’s cracked it with Top Five. The film almost shouldn’t work, shifting almost recklessly between tones as it does, but the raunch and the insight and the sadness and the slight surrealness (especially in a jailhouse cameo near the end) all come together and complement one another to create a distinctive and distinctly enjoyable piece of work.