Boy, I've been waiting to see Fast Color for quite a while now. Ever since it premiered at the South-by-Southwest Festival in March 2018, I've been eagerly awaiting the chance to see it. Alas, thanks to Lionsgate dumping this one in its tiny theatrical release, I’ve had to wait 18 whole months since its SXSW premiere to see it! Admittedly, this is the very definition of a First World Problem, but it's still been aggravating to have to wait so long to get a chance to see this movie solely because Lionsgate bungled its theatrical release so badly. When it comes to movies as good as Fast Color, though, such a wait becomes immaterial, I'm just glad I finally got to see this Julia Hart directorial effort that managed to exceed my lofty expectations!
Fast Color begins with Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) out on her own. She's not doing anything special, she's just out on the run and looking for a hotel room to stay at for the night. Once she gets inside that hotel room, though, something strange starts to happen. The ground shakes. The walls begin to crumble. Ruth writhes on her bed as she experiences a seizure that produces an Earthquake that upends the whole hotel. Ruth is not just a human being, she's someone with superpowers. At least, she used to have superpowers, now they've been replaced by constant seizures that make her a hazard to anyone she comes into contact with. Her newest seizure has caught the attention of government agent Bill (Christopher Denham), who wants to bring Ruth in to his superiors so they can run tests on her.
Trying to evade capture from Bill and his cohorts, Ruth heads back to the one place she never thought she'd return to: home. This house isolated from the rest of society is where her mom, Bo (Lorraine Toussaint), and her daughter, Lila (Saniyya Sidney), reside. Bo and Lila still have control over their superpowers and have a lot of unresolved emotional problems related to Ruth that they're going to all have to deal with. Much of the second act of Fast Color is fixated on just these three characters trying to get to know each other again in these tiny confines. The past, whether it's Ruth leaving Bo or an unfulfilled romance between Bo and local sheriff Eliss (David Straithairn), constantly looms over the proceedings and makes for some extremely interesting drama.
Among the best traits of Julia Hart and Justin Horowitz's screenplay is how it allows Ruth to be a messy imperfect person. Ruth is a lot more than just someone who used to have superpowers, she's also a recovering addict, a mother, a fugitive, these two writers incorporate an array of layers to this protagonist. No wonder Fast Color opts for intimate character exploration for much of its middle-section, there's so much to explore in regards to who Ruth is and how she's reconciling her past with the present before her. Hart and Horowitz's writing also lends dimensionality to the characters of Bo and Lila, both of whom stand out as their own individual people as well as reflections of certain facets of Ruth's personality.
Bo is especially interesting in how the film proceeds to explore her character. Initially introduced as a persistently stern figure to Ruth, we gradually begin to see how living so disassociated with the rest of the world and adhering so strictly to tradition has impacted Ruth, especially in the quietly melancholy relationship she shares with Eliss. These are parts of the character's personality that Lorraine Toussaint's performance really soars with and help to make the most integral figures of Fast Color multi-faceted human beings. There's such thoughtfulness in the way these characters are written and that thoughtfulness extends to the unique way superpowers are depicted in the climax of the film.
Usually, a movie starring a superhero would have a finale rife with using superpowers at the service of explosions, buildings turning to dust and maybe also a blue sky beam. Those can be fun, but they wouldn't work at all for an intimate character exercise like Fast Color that's all about opening communication between people. This means that this Julia Hart feature opts to use superpowers in its own climax exclusively for non-violent means, like making doors and guns vanish. Contrast this with an opening scene of Bill violently confronting Ruth with a gun that ends up leading to more chaos rather than a sense of understanding between two people. In Fast Color, using superpowers to help others is the ideal way to better the world and help others which is such a unique and thoughtful approach to the concept of superheroes.
Even better, this peaceful use of superpowers comes with the superpowered characters reaffirming their humanity over oppressive people like Bill, so it's not like Fast Color is offering up a message that peaceful tactics and standing your ground in the face of oppression are mutually exclusive elements. Fast Color closes with an extremely considerate approach to superhero-based storytelling and its most thoughtful details here and throughout the rest of the movie are handled with impressive skill by lead actor Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Adding yet another memorable performance to her impressive resume, Raw is thoroughly remarkable in the role of Ruth and conveys all the complexities of this character in the most subtle of ways, a trait that gets put to good use in Fast Color since the film frequently opts for dialogue-free explorations of what makes this character tick.
Her gift for powerful dialogue-free acting is especially noticeable in an emotionally powerhouse climactic sequence that sees the film jumping back-and-forth between Ruth and baby Lila in a hotel room from years back and forlorn Ruth in the present. Accompanied by some great editing from Martin Pensa, Raw viscerally communicates what Ruth is going through in both time periods without a single word of the dialogue. Just one look directly at the camera is all we need to get an in-depth look at her thought process during two of the most harrowing moments of this characters life. Raw's lead performance in the utterly remarkable Fast Color is so outstanding that it's practically a superheroic feat in its own right!
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