
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, September 30, 1994                   TAG: 9410040052
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: HAL HINSON THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`JASON'S LYRIC' IS A TRAGIC BALLAD OF FAMILY BONDS

``Jason's Lyric'' is a three-sided love story, but it's also a movie about the entanglements of the past. Directed by Doug McHenry from a powerful script by Bobby Smith Jr., this impressive debut has at its center the relationship between two radically different grown-up brothers. Jason (Allen Payne), the older of the two, is a soft-spoken, serious young man with an almost courtly manner who sticks close to home and takes care of his mother (Suzzanne Douglas). By contrast, Joshua (Bokeem Woodbine) can't stay out of trouble. An alcoholic with a sullen, explosive personality, he lurches from one personal disaster to another.

Early on, Joshua is just getting out of prison and Jason, as he has done throughout most of their lives, tries to put him under his protective wing. But as soon as Joshua is back out on the streets, he gets blind drunk and spoils his own coming-home party. Though Jason struggles to bring his brother into the straight life, it soon becomes clear that Joshua is beyond his help.

Under other circumstances, Jason might be able to simply cut Joshua loose and let him sink on his own. But the brothers are joined by tragic ties that cannot be severed. It is in laying out this bond between the siblings that McHenry shows his greatest sensitivity.

At one point in the film, Joshua explains why he drinks so much: ``Booze is like garlic - it keeps the ghosts away.'' And in the end, ``Jason's Lyric'' is as much a ghost story as it is a romance or a tale of two brothers. Unfortunately, though, some spirits cannot be escaped - a point that McHenry makes with an assurance that is both convincing and heartbreakingly tragic.

Jason's Lyric: A Gramercy Pictures release playing at the Salem Valley 8. Rated R for sexual scenes and violence. 84 minutes.

by CNB