Not Easily Broken (2009)

I think we can all be forgiven for mistaking Not Easily Broken for yet another Tyler Perry production. A serious minded drama about a middle class African American couple with marital problems who often turn to religion for answers. All you need is Madea head snapping her way through some life lessons and you have a typical Tyler Perry product.

If that sounds like a negative critique it's not meant as such. The fact is, Perry has grown as an artist over his relatively short feature film career and with his good heart and great intentions, any film would lucky for the comparison. The makers of Not Easily Broken can be thankful for the comparison. Though the film is not as thoughtful and compelling as Perry's Why Did I Get Married? it has similar goals and ideals and comes close to the quality.

Not Easily Broken stars Morris Chestnutt and Taraji P. Henson as Dave and Clarice, a married couple on the verge of divorce. After nearly 15 years of marriage the spark is gone and the couple spends most of their time arguing. Clarice can't stand that Dave spends so much time coaching a little league team in the inner city. He says he might be more inclined to stay home if he had a son of his own.
Clarice is making great money in real estate and feels that having a child would derail her career ambitions. The dispute is made worse when a car accident leaves Clarice with a shattered leg that will require alot of time and therapy. The injury invites Clarise's overbearing mother, Mary (Jennifer Lewis) to move in to care for her daughter and further drive the wedge between husband and wife.
Mary has never liked Dave. Then again, as we learn throughout, she's never really liked any man since her husband ran out on her. To make matters more complicated, Dave develops an off work relationship with Clarice's physical therapist, a white woman named Julie (Maeve Quinlan) that could develop into something more than flirtation.
Julie has a son that Dave takes an interest in much to the chagrin of Clarice and the suspicion of even his closest friend, Brock (Eddie Cibrian), who has his eyes on the single mom.
Whether Dave and Clarise can save their marriage or if he might be better off with Julie is not so much the subject of Not Easily Broken as it is a plot point, albeit a dramatic plot point. What is of more interest to director Bill Duke is observing the little ways in which people who love each other can find ways to hurt each other.
Whether it's husband and wife, mother and son in  law, mother and daughter or just friend and friend, the people we care about are often the people who can hurt us the most. Duke observes this idea well even as it gives the movie a little bit of distance from a narrative drive that would make it more compelling.

While I have compared Not Easily Broken to the work of Tyler Perry, in theme and style it's much closer to Chris Rock's little seen infidelity comedy I Think I Love My Wife. Both films are about troubled couples and the possibility of infidelity. More interestingly both films take a non-traditional approach to plot i.e there really isn't much of a plot.

Both films are far more concerned with setting situations from which to observe their character's behavior than in telling a story that moves fluidly from one scene to the next in typical fashion. The approach can be jarring for audiences trained on years of fluid romantic comedies that churn along like well greased plot machines.

Where these movies part ways comes really from the background of the filmmakers. Chris Rock is a comedian with a wealth of comic observation to work from. Director Duke, without an established resume beyond years of work as a character actor, relies on the source material of Reverend T.D Jakes book Not Easily Broken. That means instead of working for laughs or thoughtful truth seeking, he falls back on religion in ways that many audiences will find more truthful than Rock's piercing observations.

Final

Not Easily Broken is not a typical movie. The plot moves glacially and is more interested in the mini-moment than in moving audiences toward expected conclusions. The conclusions come eventually but they take awhile. This will bore some audiences. However, if your like me, you may be compelled by the little observations.

You have to fill in a few of the blanks yourself to make the time pass and the film cheats a few times to score emotional points, but Not Easily Broken, for me, is a moving, well intentioned work of care and honesty.