Christina Ricci wearing cut off jean shorts and a confederate flag top. Samuel Jackson sporting a half bald, trendy southern man look while spouting off bible lines and holding Ricci against her will. There are only two words that come to mind: I'm in.
When I first saw the trailers appear both online and on television, I thought that Black Snake Moan might just be another marketing ploy by a company hoping on capitalizing on the previous success Jackson had in Pulp Fiction due to the use of the word pulp in the ads as well as the grittiness of the film itself. I'm glad I was wrong.
What the film does best is juxtapose two lives at turning points when they are at their worst in regards to love. Neither understands it and neither can turn it down. Both characters have demons and both don't want to face them. That is until they encounter each other.
Ricci plays Rae, a young woman with a sex addiction caused by child abuse, whose only love, Ronnie, played by Justin Timberlake, leaves for the military early on in the film to try and make something of his white trash existence. Jackson plays Lazarus, an aging blues singer whose wife just left him to be with his brother.
As Rae gives in to her carnal urges to every man she can, including at one point a 15-year-old boy, she hits bottom and runs across the wrong man who subsequently beats her and leaves her for dead on the side of the road. Of course, Lazarus soon finds her and nurses her back to health while finding out who she is from people in town.
After Lazarus learns about who she is and just how bad she's become, he decides to help her by curing her of her 'wickedness', which means chaining her by the waist to a heater in his house.
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