Bill Duke made a spectacular
transition from hulking character actor to big-screen filmmaker with the
impressive one-two punch of 1991's A Rage In Harlem—a flavorful adaptation
of a Chester Himes novel—and 1992's Deep Cover, a mesmerizing thriller that
combined the moral haze and sinister rhythms of classic film noir with a
nuanced critique of the hypocrisy and compromises of the war on drugs. Duke has
alternated between acting and filmmaking since then, but the abundant promise
of his first films has gone egregiously unfulfilled. Duke hits his directorial
nadir with the dire Christian message movie Not Easily Broken, a clunky adaptation of a novel
by celebrity super-pastor and "Prosperity Gospel" proponent T.D. Jakes. It's as
simplistic, reductive, and heavy-handed as Deep Cover was gloriously ambiguous.