***/****
starring Clark Johnson, Karen LeBlanc, Daniel J. Gordon
screenplay by Charles Officer and Ingrid Veninger
directed by Charles Officer
by Jefferson Robbins It's broad-strokes storytelling set in Toronto's Jamaican expatriate community, in which each character and situation is understood immediately, almost subconsciously. Night-shift nurse Jude (Karen LeBlanc) is herself a patient, suffering from a potentially fatal sickle-cell disorder. It's her son Ciel (Daniel J. Gordon) who keeps her going, both figuratively and metaphysically–he's a magical thinker, reaching back to Caribbean incantation and rootwork, crafting charms to preserve his mother's life. Then washed-up boxer Silence (Clark Johnson), a closed book, drifts into their sphere; manipulated by sharks into underground pit-fighting and treated by Jude for a head wound, he leaves behind a red kerchief, like a fairytale token. Silence is en route to redemption in a new career as a boxing coach for youth, but no one in Nurse.Fighter.Boy can make it alone. Small elements of the film suffer, as when a sexual affair is disposed of too easily–a risk in this kind of dialogue-light approach. But the way these characters fall into each other's orbit (Jude is drawn to the gorgeous reggae and R&B coming from Silence's window, without knowing who he is) illustrates how the strongest families are sometimes created by chance rather than by design. Director Charles Officer and cinematographer Steve Cosens paint in reds, blues, and golds but seem to recognize that few textures are more beautiful than a black woman's skin.
