Presidents come and go, as do parties, issues, wars, crises and even movie critics, but for the longest time, one thing in Washington was as solid as the pillars at Treasury: This was Petey Greene's town. He stayed, he lasted, he endured, and only death moved him along. Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene, talk-show host, community activist, TV star, had a big, fast, funny mouth, and he rode it a long way, from prison to fame.

Now, "Talk to Me," with two great actors, tells that story, and it makes you feel not only the joy people experienced in the wash of Greene's raucous, truth-saying humor, but also his wisdom and calm. And many mourned his death at 55 in 1984.

The movie, directed by Kasi Lemmons, re-creates those days when AM radio was the weapon of mass communication, hair was big, attitudes were screechy and in your face, and the African American community was searching for a voice of authenticity. It took two to bring it to them. There was Petey, but also his discoverer, the man who saw the potential and the reality in the ex-con's raspy voice. Petey is played by Don Cheadle, in another of his chameleon-like impressions, where he becomes someone we've never seen before. His enthusiast is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor.

The movie, a conventional biopic without flashbacks, stream of consciousness or fancy storytelling tropes, begins with Petey out in the Lorton penitentiary, after an armed-robbery conviction. He has somehow talked his way -- talk being his main gift -- into a gig as a DJ on the prison radio system, where his realism and rude street humor light up (yet calm down) the inmates. Upon getting out, he talks his way into a job at Washington R&B station WOL.

The most powerful passage in the film charts Petey's long midnight of the soul the evening the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and 14th Street went aflame. The film makes the point that Petey was one of the strong voices for reason and calm that dangerous night, and if some people died, a lot more didn't because of him.

Petey was cut down by cancer, his work started, not finished. The movie is a tribute to a truth, however: Talent and guts can get you far, and you don't even have to sell out to make it.

-- Stephen Hunter (July 13, 2007)

Contains pervasive profanity and sexual content.