Mea Culpa Movie Review: An inert thriller that takes itself too seriously

In the new Netflix feature Mea Culpa, Trevante Rhodes’ Zyair Malloy calls his representative, Kelly Rowland’s Mea Harper, the best lawyer in town. In response to the comment, Mea says, “It is not like I have a lot of clients.” Even the best lawyers tend to fly under the radar, but the film does not make us believe that she is even a lawyer to begin with. Good films tend to establish such character traits not through mere conceptual dialogue but rather with action that marries them.

Director: Tyler Perry
Cast: Kelly Rowland, Trevante Rhodes, Sean Sagar, Nick Sagar, Kerry O'Malley, RonReaco Lee, Shannon Thornton

Let us consider what the so-called best lawyer does in Mea Culpa. She tells a judge that the client has the right to choose a legal representative. The judge says, “Of course, I know that,” as if to reinforce the fact that he is occupying the greater position. Mea also breaks one of the golden rules of being an attorney, and I am not saying what exactly this is to avoid spoilers. Let us just say that she deliberately walks in on two people having sex while on duty. What is even worse is that she hardly sounds like a lawyer. It is a blessing that she never makes it to court.

Mea also has the “best private investigator in town,” in her opinion. RonReaco Lee’s private-eye character at least comes up with plenty of revealing information to help Mea absolve her client of his alleged crime. The film never shows the investigator’s exact modus operandi, though. And the premise of the film is so elementary that it will only take some more brainstorming and investigating for the best lawyer and private eye to find out the truth.

The writer and director of Mea Culpa is Tyler Perry, who has set a bit of a schlockmeister reputation for himself. I guess Tyler watches plenty of crime thrillers and whodunits on TV, and portions of Mea Culpa seem straight out of a Jordan Peele film. There are Peele-like undertones of class and ethnicity throughout the film that help explain the preposterous and over-the-top climax. Not many can predict the climax, for it is such a long shot. Is it a good quality for a thriller film to have an unpredictable climax? Of course, it is. But then, the journey up until then is so inert and inept in Mea Culpa that it hardly makes us care for the proceedings or the eventualities.

Mea culpa is a Latin term that serves as an acknowledgement of one’s mistake. The tagline of the film is that everyone is guilty of something. But the longer you watch the film, the more it makes you wonder how it even ended up being on Netflix. Well, all one can say is that mistakes happen.