Directed By Andre Gaines

Starring – Andre Holland, Kate Mara, Stephen McKinley

The Plot – Successful black businessman, Clay (Holland), haunted by his crumbling marriage and identity crisis, is drawn into a sexualized game of cat and mouse with Lula, a mysterious white woman (Mara) on a subway, that leads to a violent conclusion

Rated R for sexual content, adult language and brief violence.

THE DUTCHMAN Trailer (2026) Kate Mara

POSITIVES

Though sixty years have passed since the cultural touchstone of a stage play of the same name opened the eyes of mainstream America to the subconscious realities of African-American life, its themes have never been more relevant than today, and with Gaines directorial debut eliciting such a stylistically sleek and subliminal dissection that feels decades ahead of his inexperience as a storyteller, it seamlessly makes the transition to the silver screen in ways that captivate an audience with the insecurities that fuel and subscribe to the cycles of racial tension that maintain such a divide. With themes pertaining to everything from black identity, to cultural oppression and conflict, to especially double consciousness, in the ways that black people see themselves versus how society sees them, the film taps into a dark and seedy underbelly of societal commentary that not only firmly drives the tension of the established conflict, particularly in the vulnerabilities that minorities face in any preconceived situation that thrives on mental manipulation, but also effortlessly immerses us into the disempowering feeling of helplessness in continuously playing to a cycle that offers Clay very few accessible options towards clearing his name, a fact made all the more transparently evident on the open-ended ambiguity of Gaines’ direction, which garners just enough of a blazed path to the meaning of the narrative without deliberately sacrificing the spectacle of speculation that makes audiences question the realities of what they’re experiencing. Gaines is wise enough to keep the engagement free from pretentiousness, particularly as an unnecessary means of complicating or convoluting a story that already doesn’t live entirely on the surface level, but his single biggest influence is between the doubling down of camera techniques, between handheld and still frame, which in many ways mirror much of the aforementioned duality of his isolated protagonist, with dreamlike imagery and darker color tones that make this feel like a nocturnally navigated nightmare brought to life, without a firm grasp over the realities of what transpires between an overly aggressive white woman and a successful black businessman in the public eye of perceptive strangers. Every shot feels like it plays into the mentality of what the scene is trying to convey, especially alongside some subtly placed and meaningful set decoration among the designs of the claustrophobic confines of this train, offering enough breadcrumbs in the materializing interpretation of the audience, and though the film never quite reaches a stylistically diverting presentation to allude from the lack of concrete details in the script’s substantial stimulation, he doesn’t undervalue the effects that it plays into Clay’s vulnerably encompassing paranoia, and I for one can’t wait to see what this man can do with a slightly larger budget on an even grander stage. Besides all of this, the performances also breathe a lot of life and psychology to these complex characters, with Andre Holland and Kate Mara each radiating such unflinching screen presence to their respective portrayals. Holland rides the waves of emotional instability, as a result of the ever-shifting dynamic of the power struggle that he shares with Lula, with his finest moments coming from an unclenched third act that seemingly unloads the oppression and desecration of his people for an entire lifetime, and Mara, while either emulating a hilariously over-the-top or meticulously unsettling turn (Depending who you ask), dazzles in her single most impactful turn to date, with piercing eyes and snarling, seething confidence towards an unwavering poker face that appraises such palpable intimidation, on account of the mythic ambiguity that surrounds her snarky demeanor.

NEGATIVES

While “The Dutchman” does offer some stirring conversation in the societal observations it uncovers with such brutally unforgiving honesty, the delve inside of Gaines and Qasim Basir’s script is continuously met with underdeveloped disappointment, as a result of the movie’s unfulfilling 88-minute runtime, offering abrupt developments and minimalized pursuit towards vital themes that are compromised by breakneck pacing that undercuts the movie’s most meaningful moments. This is most apparent in the movie’s initial introduction between Clay and Lula, in which they meet, physically hook-up, and become bitter enemies in a matter of the film’s first twenty-five minutes, but even beyond this, there’s such a lack of patience to the materializing of events that diverts from the real meat of this movie’s material, with every aforementioned theme other than dual identity feeling mutually undercooked in a hodgepodge of a stew that never settles in to a naturalistic rhythm with its storytelling, in turn becoming a film that evolves to be too psycho-surreal, instead of one that meets our societal differences at eye level, in ways that everybody in the audience can coherently interpret. On top of the movie’s undercutting runtime, there’s also some laughably juvenile dialogue that doesn’t translate particularly well in this contemporary rendering, resulting in some tone deaf instances to the movie’s climax that feel so heavy handed and unsubtle in ways that immediately detracted my investment in these tense confrontations. The worst easily comes from Lula, who at times during the third act can feel like a Lifetime Television idea of a racist antagonist, particularly once she starts jiving to her own produced Southern hymn, in which she preaches about how the blues were born. I can wholeheartedly understand that it pertains to the menace and psychological disarming of her character, but there are certain lines so transparently obvious and lacking creativity that I actually saw them coming from miles away, as a result of so many one-dimensional racism movies that I’ve seen during my earlier years, and it has me thinking Gaines is better utilized as a director than a writer, especially considering his stunning style commanded such a firm grasp on my attention, as to where the writing continuously hindered what little tension that was attained, instead opting for softcore titillation that erratically dismissed any kind of edge-of-the-seat momentum that the movie had going for it. Finally, the lasting impressions of the audience will obviously depend on the level of impact attained during the movie’s climax, and while I do applaud the movie for deviating considerably in its ending from both its stage play and its 1966 black and white cinematic adaptation, what we’re left with is a slightly confusing and ultimately unfulfilling resolution, in which the movie feels like it abruptly stops instead of offers thematic payoff to its audience. The message is certainly there, ideally how the future is a prologue in the book of life that we ultimately write for ourselves, but it requires the context of those in the audience to have followed it every step along the way, and considering the story is framed metaphorically in ways that establishes the real life book as one that co-exists in this fictional universe, it leaves the clarity of its intentions and movements requiring a bit more interpretation to fill in the gaps than necessary, even with an unnecessarily over-explained exposition dump Clay and the movie’s established narrator, as well as a tacked-on message about technological awareness, that attempts to take away some of the sting from speculation.

OVERALL
“The Dutchman” does serve as a metaphysical fever dream of a directorial debut for Andre Gaines, particularly in the richly textured ambiance of the imagery conveying an inescapable nightmare for its conflicted protagonist. But it’s unfortunately one that is simultaneously overwhelmed and underdeveloped by a script held captive by its minimalizing runtime and dumbfounding dialogue, leaving this psychological thriller about race and black emasculation silenced by a hollow execution that feels too metaphorical to be meaningful.

My Grade: 5.4 or D