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Plot:
Samuel L. Jackson gives a virtuoso performance in this intensely visual suspense film. Jackson stars as Romulus Ledbetter, a brilliant musician whose mental demons have driven him onto the streets. Wh...( read more 
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Recent Reviews
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MCT:June 8, 2008Well let's see...Romulus is mentally ill, a troglodyte in a New York City park. He's also a gifted composer and the father of a city cop. On Valentine's Day, a young man freezes in a tree near his cave. The police determine it's the accidental death of someone behaving bizarrely, but Romulus believes a friend of the dead youth who says that noted avant-garde photographer, David Leppenraub, murdered him. Romulus, urged on by hallucinations of his wife as a young woman, resolves to catch the killer and manages to be invited to Leppenraub's farm to play a new composition...the imagery,...portic, and Samuel's performance spot on as always...and the ending was great...
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MCT:April 30, 2008Visually very interesting, great great performance from Sam Motherfucking Jackson but the story isn't the greatest but the fact the detective is homeless is interesting twist to very old genre
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MCT:February 29, 2008
has its moments. The score is pretty bad, but the performed piano pieces are very good. The angels are done well too. Touching at times, but it's brought down by a twist that's silly and some gratuitous scenes. So disappointing by these that it cheapens the sentiment.
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MCT:February 25, 2008
I don't remember why I first watched this movie, perhaps I saw imagery from it somewhere and thought, "Hey! Samuel L. Jackson! Can't be TOO bad!"
Mr. Jackson plays one Romulus "The Caveman" Ledbetter, occupant of a "rocky enclosure" in Innwood Park, New York, father of Lulu (Anjanue--ouch, phonetic spelling of French?--Ellis) and ex(?)-husband of Sheila (Tamara Tunie). The first thing we see is inside his head, where his Juilliard-trained fingers still have a piano to occupy themselves with, playing to the accompaniment of the "moth-seraphs" that also occupy his mind. Rom occupies this cave and is referred to as "Caveman" because he is a paranoid schizophrenic. He finds outside his cave on Valentine's Day, the body of model Scotty Gates (Sean MacMahon), high in a tree. He reports this to his daughter Lulu, and we find she is in fact a police officer. Known for his rants about "Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant," Rom believes the man occupies the Chrysler Building and sends out "Y" and "Z" Rays to control the populace and deny them their freedom of mind. As such, Lulu is reluctant to believe him, but eventually does come to find the body is present as he has claimed, and so an investigation begins into his death, with Rom strongly suspecting photographer David Leppenraub (Colm Feore) is behind the crime.
The strongest element by far is the imagery associated with Romulus' mind, the forceful editing and performance of the athletes portraying the "moth-seraphs" is unbelievably striking and primal, as they represent something of the forces of justice and vengeance in the mind of Ledbetter. The rest of the plot is not overly engaging, and George Dawes Green's screenplay (based on his own book) is a bit clumsy, with Romulus seeming too coherent at too many of the right times, or a little too "crazy" to be realistically crazy, and characters either accepting or rejecting him with equal measures of imbalanced and "convenient" reality or fiction. Bob (Anthony Michael Hall) and Betty (Kate McNeil) are Romulus' idea of the upper class, and they take Romulus in, surprised by the training he possesses musically and enthralled by it, sometimes seeming respectful of his paranoia, other times inappropriately disturbed by it. Jackson's performance, and most of them in the film, are quite good, with our ability to sympathize with this crazed man intact, yet a distance maintained with a believably threatening, uncomfortable level of disconnection from reality never being too far from us. His eventual affair with Moira Leppenraub (Ann Magnuson) is really uncomfortable, seeming grossly out of place and strange, as if she is either taking advantage of him or is not aware of his madness--though this feeling is of course dampened by a script that can't seem to make up its mind just how far gone he is from reality.
In the end, the general reviews around are essentially correct--the film is well put together and creative, but its reach exceeds its grasp, and it stumbles a fair bit of the time. While it's fascinating to have a main character so removed from our understanding, it also makes it difficult for us to appreciate his approach, and terribly difficult to believe his abilities as a detective, as if he is conveniently made not crazy at the appropriate points to let the mystery be solved. A schizophrenic detective is simply not plausible as filmed. -
MCT:October 31, 2007
I've been wanting to see this and I was a little disappointed when I did. It wasn't what I was expecting and I was a little annoyed by some of the stuff in it. The ending was a little silly but Sam Jackson does a great job acting none-the-less.
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MCT:August 18, 2007
Samuel L. Jackson is amazing in this movie! The art direction is awesome!!! and Colm Feore makes such a good bad guy.
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MCT:July 27, 2007
The thin line between genius and insanity is examined in this story of a gifted man estranged from his family and separated from his vocation by his seemingly unfounded paranoia. `The Caveman's Valentine,' directed by Kasi Lemmons, stars Samuel L. Jackson as Romulus Ledbetter, a former Julliard student, talented composer and pianist who now lives in a cave near a park in New York City. Romulus treads that delicate line between reality and fantasy, his thought process interrupted by the `moth seraphs' that live within his head, but even during his most rational periods the demons of his delusions plague him incessantly. Samuel L. Jackson gives a dynamic performance as Romulus, who has a tendency to lapse into quiet moments, but guards against them as if they were a threat to his safety. Afraid to let his guard down, he fights his fears with anger and bravura, but clearly that's not who this man really is, which Jackson communicates quite effectively.
The Caveman's Valentine' has something to say about the diversity of a society in which everyone has a place, no matter what they may appear to be, and the fact that absolutely no one should ever be dismissed out-of-hand. It says that there are no `throw-away' people; that the value of an individual often cannot be measured until confronted with extraordinary circumstances, for it is that which brings out the best and drives someone like Romulus to exercise the latent capacity which lies within. One of life's lessons, told here with a profound clarity by Lemmons, through a medium that is the magic of the movies. -
MCT:July 20, 2007
I thought that Samuel L. should have gotten an Oscar nod for this performance. This was a really great story and movie and didnt ge the recognition it should have
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MCT:March 27, 2007
Something about this movie was just so compelling, I'd have a hard time giving it any less than four stars. Typical Sam delving into a role with everything he has.
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MCT:January 30, 2007
Amazing performance by Samuel in this, he brings the desperation and confusion to madness to a stark life.
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MCT:July 17, 2006
A completely inscrutable art film of novelistic density. Mostly too busy bombarding its audience with incommensurable details to bother with a narrative or with human emotion. Proof positive that Sam Jackson has extremely bizarre taste...
"STYVISSON!!!"
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