Regina King stars in “Shirley” as the groundbreaking politician Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president in 1972.
Regina King gives a lively, convincing portrayal of pioneering U.S. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm in “Shirley,” an earnest, curiously listless biopic of a woman whose legacy suffuses modern life, even as it goes unacknowledged.
In 1968, Chisholm became the first African American woman to serve as a U.S. representative, for New York’s 12th District; an early scene in “Shirley” depicts the Brooklyn politician hurrying to finish her McDonald’s strawberry milkshake before joining that year’s “class picture” on the Capitol steps, the only Black and female face in a sea of White men.
Four years later, Chisholm would make history again, as the first African American woman to run for president. That campaign is the focus of “Shirley,” written and directed by John Ridley, who does a dutiful job of laying out the dynamics of the race to defeat Richard M. Nixon, a Democratic primary that included initial front-runner Edmund Muskie, as well as Hubert Humphrey, John Lindsay, George Wallace and the eventual nominee, George McGovern.
Such are the nuances left on the cutting-room floor of a movie that feels perfunctory and starchily instructional when it should be a stirring monument to one of the most consequential figures of America’s 20th century. Constructed with episodic predictability graced with a few expressionistic flourishes, “Shirley” co-stars Christina Jackson as Chisholm’s protégé Barbara Lee, who would represent her own 12th District as a U.S.
Lucas Hedges, Terrence Howard and the late Lance Reddick — appearing in his final role — portray the men who rallied around Chisholm during a run that looks quixotic, then hopeless, until a suspenseful sequence involving delegate horse-trading at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach; but it’s King who gives “Shirley” its spirit and soul, inhabiting Chisholm with a steely confidence that is only somewhat disguised by her gentle Barbadian accent.
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