All roads head south

Rating: 6/10 (5 January 2019)

Green Book is really an updated version of Driving Miss Daisy directed by Peter Farrelly.
Based on true events and set in 1962. Tony Lipp (Viggo Mortensen) is a mouthy nightclub bounce from the Bronx. He is out of a job as the nightclub is going through renovations.
Tony has been recommended to be a driver and bodyguard to erudite black piano player Dr Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali.)
Dr Don is going on a pre Christmas tour of the deep south, Tony will drive him to the venues with the help of the Green Book, a guide book for black travellers. That will tell him the roads a black man can take, the motels a black man can stay in.
The relationship between the two men is like the odd couple. Dr Don is fastidious. Tony is a slob and easily gets into fights, he is also a racist at first.
Both men bond as they hit the road, experiencing constant discrimination.
It is a well acted film with a regal turn from Ali. There is comedy and the film gets a little gloomier as it heads deeper to the south.
The racism is anesthetized to make it palatable for modern audiences. In reality a black man being chauffeured driven by a white man in the deep south would had been odd and more dangerous.
I did feel the film is a little too glib and superficial. It has an ending which is a little too neat. I doubt for a moment that even today, those backwood roads in the deep south are safe for some black travellers.