Cadillac Records is one of those movies that you enjoy thoroughly, but then you go home and look up as much as you can to see if it was true. Unfortunately, a lot of it wans't, but that really doesn't reflect poorly on the movie itself. Especially because the only ones who care are the ones who already know a lot about Chess Records. There aren't too many of those people around. So this movie is not historically relevent, but very entertaining.
Cadillac Records is the story of Leonard Chess starting up his own record label and discovering and recording black musicians, including Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and Etta James. Chess is a morally ambiguous fellow, but still likeable. He bribes DJs, it's implied that he burned down his club for the insurance money, and that he was screwing his artists out of money. Maybe. I'm honestly not too sure yet if he was fucking them over, or watching their backs. He would do things like give a cadillac to Muddy, and then take it out of his royalties. When Muddy was down on his luck, he took 10 percent of Chuck Berry's royalties and gave them to Muddy, because "Chuck won't miss it". Is that screwing them or helping them? Or both? This guy was all over the place. One of the really interesting parts, and this happens with all biopics from this era, is seeing how rock stars then suffer from similar problems that modern rock stars suffer from. The 50's is such a heavily idealized era, that we wouldn't expect Etta James to be on smack, but she was. Or that Chuck Berry would have been arrested for transporting a minor across state lines for prostitution, but he was. Also the bitter rivalries between members of Chess Records were interesting. In an era that is portrayed as peaceful as the 50s you don't really think about people being total dicks to each other. But Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were. Stealing band members, stealing ladies, calling each other names, etc. Also, Little Walter straight up shooting a guy was unexpected.
The musical performances were suberb, especially Beyonce Knowles as Etta James. The song she sings in the closing scene was almost worth the price of admission in itself. However the ending especially was fictionalized to make it more poignant and emotional, which, like I said, wasn't bad. It definitely made for great entertainment. But when an ending makes you want to go home and make sure that was true, the biopic is not doing it's job. But all in all, an enjoyable movie, worth seeing in theaters and definitely at least worth renting.
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