All Day and a Night | 2020 | R | – 6.7.10

Why is “All Day and a Night” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “strong violence, pervasive language, drug use and some sexual content/nudity.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a few sex scenes with nudity and a couple of kissing scenes and cleavage revealing outfits; several scenes of violent deaths by gunshot and stabbing with the bloody results shown, several scenes of beatings ending with bloody bruises, a couple of scenes of an adult male beating a teen boy with a belt leaving him with welts, a prison fight ending with a bloody stabbing, and a couple of robberies at gunpoint; and scenes of drug selling and drug use, and over 150 F-words and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.”

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A soft-spoken rapper (Ashton Sanders) struggles to stay alive during a gang war in Oakland, California, having witnessed and felt violence since childhood. Landing in prison beside his father (Jeffrey Wright) he examines his life, hoping to help his newborn son break the cycle of poverty and crime. Also with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Isaiah John, Kelly Jenrette, Shakira Ja-nai Paye and Regina Taylor. Directed by Joe Robert Cole. [Running Time: 2:01]

All Day and a Night SEX/NUDITY 6

 – We see female buttocks writhing in close-up as we hear her moaning several times and a man’s hand is rubbing the buttocks (she appears to be on top of him having sex); her legs spread slightly and we glimpse her hairless genital area and what may be part of his genitals. A man sits in a dim room, lying back on a couch while smoking a drugged cigarette and the camera pulls back to show a woman performing oral sex on him (we do not see anything else); she is wearing a crop top and shredded denim short-shorts that reveal full bare legs up to the buttocks.
► A man and a woman kiss several times in a bubble bath (we see only the bare shoulders of the couple above suds) and she says that she is pregnant (the man is happy about it). A man and a woman sit on a couch and he removes his T-shirt and then replaces it; she kisses his cheek as he puts a hand on her knee and they fall asleep.
► A man tells another man that they can earn conjugal visits of 48 hours, but that he has never earned one. A man asks a teen boy, “So you like white girls, huh?” and the boys stares angrily. A man says that a woman is “Backpage,” implying anal sex.
► A few men stand around shirtless. A woman wears tight knit tops with low-cut necklines that reveal cleavage in several scenes. A woman wears a sleeveless undershirt that bares her bra straps and shoulders, with short-shorts that reveal her bare legs to the upper thighs. A man wears sagging jeans in several scenes, but his underwear is covered; he rests his hand in his waistband in one scene.

All Day and a Night VIOLENCE/GORE 7

 – A man and a woman enter a bedroom where they find a teen boy pointing two large handguns at them; the boy shoots them both several times as a preteen girl in the room screams, and we see the bodies flinch as they fall, bleeding from chest wounds. A man and a woman with assault rifles enter a garage and shoot a man 10 times (his shirt becomes bloody as he falls and dies). A middle school boy sees his father shoot a man three times in a yard; the man falls with bloody wounds in his chest and the shooter shoots the body three more times. A man shoots another man in the head, killing him with some blood flow; the shooter then shoots another man in the back, the victim falls and the shooter shoots him in the back several more times (we see bleeding from the wounds) and the man dies face down in the street.
► A man tapes a long metal nail to a cigarette lighter as a weapon and in a prison yard; a man rumored to want to kill him approaches and they struggle with the nail weapon and after grunting for several seconds, the owner of the nail weapon stabs the other man in the stomach, and we see blood covering part of the victim’s stomach as he falls to the ground (we don’t know if the victim lived or died).
► A man walks through a dark alley and into a house where we hear gunshots off-screen as we see the man knocking on a different door where a woman warns him that she has a knife; we see a long carving knife in her hand, but she puts it on a counter. Police break down an apartment door, shout, and point assault rifles at a man inside as he runs outside and through the back door of the apartment until an officer grabs him, slams him to the floor and cuffs him; three officers carry him outside and off-screen.
► A teen boy, his mother and her boyfriend argue and curse outside a police station; the man lunges and the teen slams rocks onto a car and slams the man’s head onto the car hood, the man falls to the ground and the woman shrieks, curses, and tells her son to stay away from her. Two young men steal bracelets and cash from two other men at gunpoint; one robber pistol-whips one of the victims several times and we see the man’s bleeding head and face as he falls unconscious. A group of several preteen boys punch and kick an older boy on the ground as he groans; one boy is sent home by the school principal and when he is in the backseat of his father’s car, the father throws a tray of cigarette ashes into his lap; at home, the man strikes the boy many times with a heavy leather belt, and the boy cries and wipes bloody welts on his abdomen and the back of his knees with a tissue that comes away bloody. A man pushes a woman against a wall, shouting and cursing. A preteen boy groans as he is slammed to the ground by an older boy twice.
► A man stops his car when a pickup pulls across his path and a man holding an assault rifle stands up in the truck bed; two men carrying clubs approach the car as a third searches the trunk, then lets him leave and the driver becomes tearful, drives away, stops, pounds his fist on the dashboard several times, and cries. Police pull over a car and arrest two black men for being in a white neighborhood and the scene cuts to one of the men cuffed to an interrogation table where a detective demands the names of drug dealers but the man denies knowing any.
► A man and a woman shout and curse outside her home. A woman argues for several seconds with her adult son. A man knocks down another man. A woman enters a sports store and demands to know why a man is picking up shoeboxes; he says that he works there and she leaves the store, looking angry. A man and a woman argue over a phone. A woman in a courtroom shouts and cries. Two teen boys play a violent video game in which a player uses two giant assault rifles to shoot through an alley (no one is shot).
► A man in a wheelchair says that he needs surgery and we later hear that he was injured in the military and that the surgery was unsuccessful. A man lies unconscious on a respirator in a hospital bed and a woman says that he will never walk again. A preteen boy sits on a curb, his face covered with wide scratches and he says he was beaten.
► A drug lord tells a man to beat and kill another man and the second man refuses. A man tells another man that a drug dealer wants to kill him. A man in a flashback agrees to kill another man for money, and receives two handguns to use. A narrator says that his childhood neighborhood had violence all around and that the boys had to hit first in order to survive. A man says, “Slavery taught us how to survive, not how to live.” A man says that life is the pain of a million tiny cuts, ignored until you bleed to death. We see a teenage boy and his father as inmates in the same prison and hear that the father was in a psych ward for two months. We hear that a man has a record of burglary and home invasion.
► A wake is shown with a framed photo of a man, now deceased. A block party includes loud shouting and laughing, dancing in the street, cars speeding up and down the street and around in circles, and men and women carrying beer.

All Day and a Night LANGUAGE 10

 – About 150 hundred F-words and derivatives, 3 sexual references, 89 scatological terms, 35 anatomical terms, 34 mild obscenities, 127 derogatory terms for African-Americans, name-calling (crazy, ho, boy, gangster, stupid, hypocrite, playboy, piece of work, pale faces, fish, monster, punk, ignorant, dope-head, base head, cockhead, D-Boy [drug supplier]), exclamations (shut-up, wow, I swear), 4 religious profanities (GD), 4 religious exclamations (e.g. 3 hymns, God Gives Us Power). | profanity glossary |

All Day and a Night SUBSTANCE USE

 – A man pours white powder onto a table beside bricks of drugs and a handgun, a man calls cocaine “white girl,” a few men and women smoke drugged cigarettes in cars as well as in homes and at a block party and on sidewalks, a man says that he never wants to be involved in the drug trade as his male friend passes a small bag of cocaine to another man in a handshake, a man says that teenagers are arrested for a small bag of weed and spend the rest of their lives in prison, a woman says about a man that he is “sippin’ codeine,” a man lights and smokes a drugged cigarette, and a middle school boy asks a drug dealer not to sell to his father and the dealer refuses. A man drinks from a pint bottle of clear liquor in his car and hands the bottle to a middle school boy (he also drinks from it), men and women at a block party carry beer cans and bottles, a woman puts a full jug of wine on a table with empty glasses (no one drinks), a man in a bar sips a tall glass of yellow liquid and we see a bottle of Bristol Cream on a counter, we see a beer bottle on a table, a man and a woman stagger through a dimly lit room seeming intoxicated (we do not see either smoke nor drink), and a man tells a woman that he has been drinking and his words are slurred. A man smokes a cigar in two scenes, people at a block party are shown holding cigarettes, and a car’s ashtrays are seen full of cigarette butts.

All Day and a Night DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Racism, drug lords, violence, murder, survival, domestic abuse, child abuse, lack of education, prison systems, prejudice, rap music.

All Day and a Night MESSAGE

 – Culture and a broken legal system perpetuate cycles of urban poverty and crime.