Raw, Funny, Vulnerable, “Charm City Kings” is a Triumph for Black Boyhood

Film marketing is a quagmire. On one hand are trailers that tell too much of a movie, too often revealing its beginning, middle, and end to the savvy viewer; on the other, misleading movie marketing feels like a scam, a bait-and-switch that most often results in the high-concept trailer leading to a disappointing experience. When I saw the trailer for Charm City Kings — the new film with big names behind it like Barry Jenkins, Will Smith, and Jada Pinkett-Smith — I predicted the former. My estimation was a contained world where street biking reined supreme, the suspension of belief begging you to believe that everyone values this world, knows its players, and lives by its rules. The Wire meets Fast and Furious, to ignorable effect. And for a while, as I screened the film that premiered at both Sundance and South by Southwest, I was right. And then, boy, was I wrong.

What begins as a cliché small-world story of a boy obsessed with street biking turns into an unexpectedly touching film that leverages the talent of its young cast — anchored by Jahi Di’Allo Winston — to examine the paradox between the hardness and tenderness of Black boyhood. As the movie grows from its small world of street bike racing to the broader Baltimore, so too does Charm City Kings evolve from being a coming-of-age comedy-drama with low stakes, to an exploration of the tightrope walk between the streets and a better life, and the question of second chances that lie at the heart of its theme. It’s se…