Straw (2025)
Straw (2025) is the latest film from the brilliant, creative, and tireless Tyler Perry (does the man ever sleep?). If you know anything about Perry, it is that he has range: from comedies, to dramas, to thrillers, he can do it all. Starring the reliably brilliant Taraji P. Henson, Straw is a drama which takes us through a few days in the life of her beleaguered character, Janiyah Wiltkinson. To say that this woman is going through a bad spell is a vast understatement. Here at Black Maple we know that black women routinely do the heavy lifting, but Janiyah’s load is more than any one person can bear. She has reached her breaking point, otherwise known as “the last straw” (hence the title of the film) and she simply can’t catch a break.
What do we mean? Well, for starters, Janiyah lives in a cramped apartment which can only be described as grim. It’s just her and her cute but sickly daughter, Aria (Gabby Jackson), who has severe asthma. Janiyah is worse off than living pay cheque to pay cheque. Her daughter’s schoolteacher is harassing her to provide forty dollars for Aria’s school lunches. Her landlord is threatening to evict her for overdue rent, and her boss Richard (Glynn Turman), at a grocery store where some of the clients behave like wild animals is riding her for being unreliable. Mind you, this is one of two jobs that she juggles!
So, when Janiyah arrives late to work after a run-in with her threatening, loudmouth, unsympathetic black female landlord and Aria’s school drop-off, Richard is angry. But when she begs to depart again to run an errand, he is outraged. Off she goes, back to her daughter’s school, only to be confronted with the unfathomable. The bruises on her daughter’s back, a result of a fall in the bathtub when the independent Aria sought to bathe herself, are misinterpreted as potential child abuse and social services has come to take Aria away. As a frantic Janiyah pleads with a school staff member and a social worker, a distraught Aria is led away by two other staff members. But is anyone listening when Janiyah warns that Aria should not leave without her medications?
Just when you think things can’t get any worse, Janiyah returns home in a rainstorm to discover she has indeed been evicted. With her rain-soaked possessions strewn about on the apartment complex lawn, she frantically picks through the pile salvaging whatever she can. Along the way, she’s been run off the road by a rogue white male police officer who threatens to kill her in front of a fellow white female officer who intervenes only to protect her white colleague and not the terrified Janiyah. Once back at work, Richard has had enough too, firing Janiyah and refusing to pay her. Vengefully, he informs her that she’ll have to wait for the cheque to be mailed. But departing without her pay is impossible for Janiyah who must secure money to rent a new place and pay the overdue lunch school fee for Aria.
But things keep going downhill when her argument with Richard in the lonely and windowless backroom of the grocery store is interrupted by two black male criminals, intent on robbing them. When a trembling Richard withdraws a pile of cash from the store safe, Janiyah refuses to let the thieves depart with her cheque. But after a struggle over the gun, two people are dead, and Janiyah departs with a gun and her bloodied cheque.
Much like the movie Breaking (2022) starring John Boyega and Michael Kenneth Williams, it is not surprising when Janiyah has a breakdown and resorts to completely uncharacteristic behaviour while attempting to cash her cheque in a bank across from the grocery store. So, the suspense in Straw (2025) does not come from wondering if Janiyah will snap. Horribly, it arises instead from our consideration of the odds of her surviving a police stand-off once her desire to cash her cheque in the bank is misinterpreted as an attempt to rob it. Making matters worse, her daughter’s rescued science project in Janiyah’s see-through backpack is mistaken for a bomb by the bank staff.
Henson shines in the bank scenes where she is given the space to articulate the compounding trials of Janiyah’s life and the harrowing nature of her catastrophic day. As we come to find out, besides a friend at work who offers her money and defends her character, Janiyah has no other consistent and loving adult presence in her life, not Aria’s no-good father (who we never see) or her estranged mother and sister. We see the mother once. We never see the sister.
Sherri Shepherd (actress, comedian, and talk show host) gives a powerful dramatic performance as the tender-hearted bank manager whose quick thinking and compassion may just save Janiyah’s life. But we shouldn’t be surprised that someone known for her comedy chops can deliver such a convincing dramatic performance. Just consider the likes of Tom Hanks (between A League of their Own 1992 and Philadelphia 1993), Steve Carell (between The 40 Year Old Virgin 2005 and Foxcatcher 2014), and Whoopi Goldberg (between The Color Purple 1985 and Sister Act 1992).
The versatile Rockmond Dunbar and Mike Merrill round out the cast of Straw as Police Chief Wilson and Detective Grimes respectively. Teyana Taylor also turns in a noteworthy performance as an astute and compassionate black female detective who makes it her mission to get Janiyah out of the stand-off alive, especially after a combative white male FBI Agent Bryce (Derek Phillips) takes over the case.
Like Breaking (2022), Straw is an intense drama with flawed human beings who are forced to interact in unprecedented situations. Most of the movie takes place in the bank where Janiyah attempts to resolve her financial issues and the bank parking lot where the police, FBI, protestors, and media assemble as Janiyah’s plight is, initially unbeknownst to her, live-streamed to the world. Filming across other locations would have made the film feel less claustrophobic. Meanwhile, providing more backstory for some of the characters (like the three black female bank employees) and integrating others (like Aria’s missing father, and Janiyah’s mother and sister) would have helped to create more nuance and deepen our investment in the characters’ plights. However, Straw is still a moving drama which delivers important lessons about morality and compassion.