‘Mea Culpa’ Review: Who’s Really to Blame, and for What?

Is creating a guilty pleasure something a director can — or even should — aim for? That’s one of the questions wafting over the writer-director Tyler Perry’s willfully steamy thriller “Mea Culpa.”

Cast for sizzle, the movie stars the singer-actor Kelly Rowland as Mea Harper, a Chicago defense attorney, and Trevante Rhodes (“Moonlight”) as a successful painter accused of killing his girlfriend. Her body has yet to been found, but there were skull fragments in one of his paintings.

The assistant district attorney Ray Hawthorne (Nick Sagar) hopes to leverage the case for a mayoral run. He’s also Mea’s brother-in-law. In the firm clutches of the matriarch Azalia (Kerry O’Malley), the Hawthornes are an ambitious clan who appear to have borrowed much of their dialogue from the daytime soaps of yore. Among Mea’s reasons for taking this case is the Hawthorne family’s condescension and the excessive deference her husband, Kal, (Sean Sagar) shows his mother. (In case the family isn’t close enough, the actors Sean and Nick Sagar are brothers).

Rowland commits to the thankless task of playing a smart woman gone stupid. Rhodes can’t do much with Zyair, whose affect is more flat than seductive. Or, as Mea’s private investigator and friend Jimmy (RonReaco Lee, a bright spot) quips: Zyair’s either a great liar or a psychopath.

While the movie teases with its “is he or isn’t he a murderer?” quandary, the soundtrack boasts killer tunes, including Isaac Hayes’s cover of “Walk on By,” playing like a caution the first time Mea visits Zyair’s loft. The warning goes unheeded, and the two embark on a possibly dangerous and decidedly silly liaison, one that taps into spousal angst and features plenty of soft-core intrigue.

Mea Culpa
Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language, some violence and drug use. Running time: 2 hours. Watch on Netflix.