Green Book is a film about two men who can barely stand each other, forced to drive across the American South in 1962. Tony Vallelonga, a working-class Italian-American bouncer from New York, agrees to serve as driver and bodyguard for Don Shirley, a world-class African-American pianist on tour. The setup sounds like a formula for a feel-good road comedy, and it mostly delivers one. What the film struggles with is the weight of its own history. It wants to be a story about friendship overcoming prejudice, but the prejudice it shows is so thinly sketched that the triumph feels hollow.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
Tony and Don
The film opens with Tony, played by Viggo Mortensen, driving Don, played by Mahershala Ali, from New York to Alabama. Don is a cultured man, a classical musician who has spent years performing in Europe while facing discrimination back home. Tony is rough around the edges, quick to anger, and openly hostile toward anyone he sees as inferior. Their first scenes together are uncomfortable, but the script trusts that chemistry between the actors will carry the tension. It mostly does.
Mortensen plays Tony as a physical force, a man who carries his anger in his shoulders and his fists. He is not a sympathetic character at first. He is a racist, a bully, and a liar. The film asks us to watch him change over the course of the journey, and Mortensen commits fully to that arc. By the end, we care about Tony. That is a skill, even if the reasons he changes feel less earned than convenient.
Ali plays Don with a quiet dignity that makes his patience seem almost superhuman. His Don is a man of refinement and intelligence who must navigate constant humiliation simply to play a concert. He refuses to fight back, but the film suggests his inner strength is far greater than anyone around him suspects. The contrast between the two men is the engine of the film, and both performances keep it humming.
Comedy and Its Limits
Green Book leans heavily on humor, and much of it works. There are jokes about food, about music, and about the absurdity of the situation. The film understands that comedy can be a way to make difficult subjects easier to swallow. But the comedy also reveals the film’s biggest problem: it treats racism as something to be laughed at, not something to be mourned.
The jokes about segregation are often delivered with a wink, as though the film is saying, “Look how silly these rules were!” This is a dangerous move. Racism was not silly. It was violent, it was degrading, and it destroyed lives. The film acknowledges this in moments of quiet reflection, but the tone keeps snapping back to levity. The result is a film that feels lighter than the subject deserves.
There are exceptions. A scene where Tony is forced to sit in the back of a restaurant while Don sits at the front is handled with genuine discomfort. Another scene where Don is refused service at a hotel because of his skin color hits harder than most of the film’s attempts at wit. These moments work because they let the film sit in the pain instead of rushing past it.
The Road Trip Structure
The film follows a classic road-trip template: the two leads start as enemies, grow to respect each other, and emerge as friends by the end. This is not a fresh idea, and the film does not try to disguise it. The journey itself is the story, and the stops along the way — the clubs, the hotels, the restaurants — are where the characters reveal themselves.
Each location brings new conflict. A club owner refuses to let Don perform until he dresses in a tuxedo. A diner manager insists Tony eat separately from Don. A policeman pulls them over and threatens violence. These moments are designed to test the bond between the two men, and they do. But the tests feel repetitive, and the film leans on the same tricks — a shared meal, a moment of kindness, a joke that breaks the tension — more than it should.
The film also spends a lot of time on Don’s personal life, showing him as a man who has sacrificed marriage and children for his career. This subplot adds depth to his character, but it also slows the pacing. The film is already over two hours long, and the detours into Don’s backstory sometimes feel like padding.
The Ending Problem
The final act of Green Book is where the film’s flaws become clearest. After a series of escalating conflicts, the climax arrives in a small town in the Deep South, where Don is threatened by a group of locals. Tony steps in to protect him, and the two men fight side by side. The scene is tense, but it feels staged. We have been told all film that Tony and Don are growing closer, and the fight confirms it. But the growth has been gradual enough that the moment lands as a payoff rather than a revelation.
The ending itself is a mix of gratitude and resolution. Tony thanks Don for the trip, and Don thanks Tony for his protection. They part ways, and the film ends on a note of mutual respect. It is a satisfying conclusion, but it is also one that feels earned by the performances rather than by the plot. The film has not built a case for why these two men became friends; it has simply shown them doing it.
A Well-Made Movie With A Weak Core
Green Book is a competently made movie with a weak core. The acting is strong, the direction is confident, and the production values are high. But the film’s central idea — that two men from opposite worlds can find common ground through simple human connection — is undercut by its refusal to engage seriously with the systemic violence that made that connection impossible for so long.
The film is not a failure. It is a sincere attempt at a difficult story, and it succeeds in making us care about its characters. But it fails to make us understand the world they lived in. It tells us that racism is wrong, but it rarely shows us how deeply wrong it was. The result is a film that is pleasant to watch and forgettable to remember.
| Scene | Location | Tone |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | New York | Uneasy |
| Club confrontation | Alabama | Tense |
| Diner standoff | Mississippi | Humorous |
| Final fight | Deep South | Climactic |
| Farewell | Various | Reflective |
The film is worth seeing for Mortensen and Ali’s performances alone. But it is a film that asks to be celebrated as a landmark of racial progress, and it does not quite deliver on that promise. It is a good movie about a great subject, and the difference between the two is the measure of its success.
Green Book is a solid, if flawed, road movie that respects its characters more than its subject. It is a film that will make you laugh and make you think, but not necessarily in the order you expect. It is a film that will leave you moved, but not transformed. It is a film that deserves its audience, but not its praise.
