Black Snake Moan

BLACK SNAKE MOAN — *** — Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake; rated R (sex, profanity, violence, drugs); see Page W2 for theaters.

Sweet is probably the last word you'd expect to use in describing a film about an aging black man who chains a young white woman to a radiator to cure her of her demons. In the rural South, of all places.

Sweet, however, is what "Black Snake Moan" ultimately, unexpectedly becomes.

This is a movie that's definitely going to make people angry. Many will view it as racist, misogynistic or both — or just plain hard to watch. It doesn't exactly shy away from being pulpy or over-the-top, which can be both its allure and its greatest weakness.

But if you can just accept the metaphor, and that's what writer-director Craig Brewer intends the chain to be, you'll find an ingenious vision of the fundamental concept of redemption. Love lost and found, faith lost and found — Brewer takes these tried-and-true themes and breathes bold, fresh life into them.

As in his last film, 2005's "Hustle & Flow," he shows a keen ability to evoke a thick, rich mood. This place is so hot and sticky, you might break into a sweat just watching it. But this time he's gotten better at developing his characters. Despite tour-de-force work from Terrence Howard as a wannabe rapper (and that irresistibly catchy, Oscar-winning song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"), "Hustle & Flow" paraded an array of pimp-and-ho cliches, and its tale of struggling artistry is one we've seen a million times before.

But there's more nuance here, more humanity. Samuel L. Jackson's Lazarus and Christina Ricci's Rae form a friendship that's complicated, strange, often funny, but in the end balanced and very warm. S. Epatha Merkerson and Justin Timberlake complete the picture as the people who love them.

And the music? Let's just say Jackson could step up to the mike at any juke joint on any night and bring the house down. (Ironically, Timberlake is the one person in this movie who doesn't get to sing.)

As Lazarus, a small-time farmer whose wife has left him for his younger brother, Jackson gets to be everything you want to see him be on the screen: forceful, no-nonsense and slightly unpredictable. But there's a softer side too, which is evident when Lazarus finds Rae lying on the side of the road near his house.