Strap Yourself In

Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You—a surreal, anti-capitalist sci-fi satire—is the wildest, bumpiest ride of the summer. (And, by the way, he’s not sorry at all)

- Anna Menta

LABOR UNIONS DON’T GET A LOT OF LOVE IN Hollywood films. Salt of the Earth (1954), Harlan County U.S.A. (1976), Norma Rae (1979), Matewan (1987), Newsies (1992): A documentary, a musical, three dramas, all of them are pretty dated. And none feature human-horse hybrids with giant genitalia.

Did that get your attention? Boots Riley is hoping so. His trippy and unapologetically angry comedy Sorry to Bother You—which opens July 6—has already delighted film festival audiences, beginning with those at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it brought the house down. “I’m telling stories in a different way,” says the first-time director and lead vocalist for Oakland, California–based hip-hop band the Coup. “But I believe it works because it’s forcing a different kind of engagement. People that are used to being able to predict where a movie is going—with this one they’re not able to.”

The film stars Lakeith Stanfield (Atlanta, Get Out) as Cassius “Cash” Green, who lives in his uncle’s garage with his artist- activist girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson), in Oakland—an alternate universe version of Oakland. Things aren’t going so well: A program called Worry Free is offering poor people a lifetime of indentured servitude in exchange for room and board. Cash narrowly avoids that fate when he lands a telemarketing job. After weeks of no sales (wages are commission only) he halfheartedly joins a co-worker (Steven Yeun) in organizing a strike—until he discovers his “white voice.”