The 1971 San Francisco oil spill that dumped more than 800,000 gallons of crude off its coast was an environmental disaster. But for a shrewd Black trucking entrepreneur named Charlie Walker, it was a golden opportunity to puncture the racism in his industry and to make some serious cash from a rich, embattled oil company. For as long as the system let him, of course.
In telling the story of Walker’s crafty exploits saving a beach and fighting discrimination, the independently made “I’m Charlie Walker” from writer-director Patrick Gilles is its own amorphous discharge, if not so slick.
It boasts a commanding, old-school star-wattage turn from Mike Colter (“Luke Cage”) as the hustling, tussling Walker, but its mix of sidelined Black history and fight-the-power narrative is too messy to have the impact it should, especially after the handful of memorable black-themed Bay Area stories we’ve gotten of late (“The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” “Blindspotting,” “Sorry to Bother You”).