Long Before the MCU, Anthony Mackie Steamed It Up in This Racy Spike Lee Satire

From his early years as an NYU film student to Oscar-winning success with BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee remains one of the most provocative filmmakers in modern cinema. Each of his “joints” dating back to his breakout 1986 dramedy She’s Gotta Have It often provides a snapshot of where black America stands socially and politically. In 2004, he took on the politics of sex and Wall Street in the satire She Hate Me.

Marking the first high-profile lead roles for rising stars Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington, She Hate Me made an ambitious attempt for Lee to take inspiration from the Enron accounting scandal and merge it with messaging about the responsibilities of black fathers. While elevated by an all-star ensemble cast including Woody Harrelson and Monica Bellucci, the film was heavily criticized for jamming too many storylines with mixed messages. Yet, like the majority of Lee’s narrative works, She Hate Me aims to provoke the audience rather than to entertain them.

What Is ‘She Hate Me’ About?

Lee kicks off the movie with full force in an All the President’s Men-style noir when ambitious young executive Jack Armstrong (Mackie) uncovers insider trading within his biotech company, Progeia, from a colleague who takes his own life. Upon informing an ethics panel that launches an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jack is quickly terminated by the Progeia executives (Harrelson and Ellen Barkin). Without a source of income, he accepts a cash offer by his ex-fiancee-turned-lesbian Fatima (Washington) and her girlfriend Alex (Dania Ramirez) to impregnate them.

Once Jack fulfills his obligation, Fatima decides he should go further by starting a business as a high-priced sperm donor to lesbians across the city, including Simona Bonasera (Bellucci), the daughter of an Italian mob boss (John Turturro). Once Jack’s former employers learn of his new line of work, they expose it publicly to sidetrack the media from their crimes. With the intense scrutiny surrounding his life, Jack has to confront a Senate committee not only about his findings of illegal activity but also to defend his controversial new profession.

The initial setups in most of Lee’s work prior to She Hate Me usually informed the overall direction of the premise. The promise of the story within the first twenty minutes of the film had serious potential for Lee to sink his teeth into the timely subject matter of race and corporate greed against the backdrop of the Bush Administration era. The film often references Jack’s struggles with Watergate security guard Frank Wills (Chiwetel Ejiofor) whose life fell into poverty after spotting the five DNC intruders in 1972. But the outrageous sharp turn into Jack’s new profession causes She Hate Me to have an imbalance in its sequences.

Roger Ebert Defended Spike Lee’s Multi-Narrative Approach in ‘She Hate Me’

The most engaging moments of the film involve Progeia’s attempts at covering up their crimes to the press, as well as Jack exploding at a bank when he learns his account has been frozen. As Jack, Mackie’s performance is an honest portrayal of a man crucified for doing what is right. But as soon as it switches to scenes of Jack impregnating lesbians intercut with animated sequences of his sperm inserting their wombs, the initial messaging established at the start of the film appears to be replaced by a tale about a man’s parental responsibility in these polygamous relationships. She Hate Me becomes more about Jack’s desperation to be a better man rather than focusing on his courage to stand up to corruption.

By every measure, She Hate Me is an untraditional narrative struggling to connect its mixed messages. Movies about the world’s oldest profession, like American Gigolo and television shows like HBO’s Hung have deeper themes about economic struggles for men in society. If there is any connection between the Progeia scandal and Jack becoming a male prostitute/sperm donor, it is an ironic two-way mirror: A good man who blew the whistle on an accounting crime, but breaks the law by going into prostitution to resolve his financial troubles. Legendary critic Roger Ebert was one of the film’s few defenders of Lee’s multi-narrative approach, calling She Hate Me “the work of a man who wants to dare us to deal with it.”

Between the colorful characters played by an all-star cast and the absurd stakes of Jack’s line of commerce going public, She Hate Me quickly becomes a situation comedy that never fully reaches the potential of its hot start because of the mixed messaging that Lee weaves into the narrative.

She Hate Me

Release Date

July 30, 2004

Runtime

139 minutes