“If I Go Will They Miss Me” (Photo – Michael Cambio Fernandez)
If I Go Will They Miss Me is the third movie I’ve seen lately with mythological overtones, following The Odyssey and The Dog Stars, and now this tale of a Black father returned from prison to Nickerson Gardens in South Central L.A.
If I Go Will They Miss Me
Directed by Walter Thompson-Hernández – 2026
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
It’s the best of the three in terms of the enigma of arrival and the difficulty of adjustment.
J. Alphonse Nicholson plays Big Anthony, an ex-con trying to reunite with his family and, in particular, his eldest son, Little Ant. Their relationship is touch-and-go, to put it mildly. “He and I ain’t the same,” Anthony says of his son, though one suspects while watching the movie that they are the same in many ways. Little Ant is resented for having the opportunities that were denied to his father. An incident in adolescence had set Anthony on the wrong path.
One of those things is a fondness for flying. Little Ant has his head in the clouds, literally, seeing planes constantly flying above them on the LAX flight path. He plays with toy airplanes, draws them on the wall, and buys completely into the myth of Pegasus, the winged horse. This is in contrast with Big Anthony, who deals with real horses, cleaning stalls at a nearby ranch.
The movie presents a picture of Los Angeles rarely seen on film. Instead of a bright, sunny atmosphere, the weather is constantly overcast, and the whoosh of passing planes is never-ending, just as it was in Bulworth, the 1998 Warren Beatty film, which also captured South Central. And when was the last time you saw that L.A. landmark, the Watts Towers, in a movie?
The film contrasts its gritty realism with a magic realism, like the imagined or hallucinated formation of Black youths outside Little Ant’s window. Standing like planes on a runway, waiting for clearance with their arms outstretched, their placement suggests a potential for flight, which is Little Ant’s dream. In a similar vein, he looks past his father and out to sea and sees, just past the breakers, an ancient trireme-like ship, as if waiting to take him away.
The film is the best movie I’ve seen in terms of a difficult Black adolescence since Moonlight, the Academy Award winner of ten years ago.
There are also echoes of Roma by Alfonso Cuarón, particularly in the constant shots of planes flying above. Walter Thompson-Hernández, the film’s writer and director, repeats these shots too much, though, not letting the metaphor for flight speak for itself.
The cast is all good, but special mention must be made of the lead actor, J. Alphonse Nicholson, as Big Ant. They say the best film acting is done with the eyes, and Nicholson regards the world in a blend of fear, suspicion, and confusion with just a single shift of his focus.
If I Go Will They Miss Me is a film well worth seeking out, and my only criticism, outside of the overused flying metaphor, concerns the last few minutes of the film. I felt that a couple of different endings and a narrowly averted tragedy are left for the viewer to figure out. Or maybe that’s the point. I’m not sure.
> Playing at Landmark Theatres Pasadena, Vidiots, and AMC Burbank Town Center 8.
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