--- description: Find out why "Talk to Me" is on TIME's list of the 50 most underappreciated movies of the 21st Century. title: 'Talk to Me' Is on The 50 Most Underappreciated Movies of the 21st Century image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3ccb85109eb067d1/6998cd4bd32e93475bcd7b52/Underappreciated-Movies-Talk-to-Me.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Feb 04, 2026 # _Talk to Me_ Kasi Lemmons by [Stephanie Zacharek](/author/stephanie-zacharek/) ## Stephanie Zacharek Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Film Critic  Don Cheadle in "Talk to Me", 2007. Don Cheadle in "Talk to Me", 2007.Focus Features/Everett Collection Before I saw [Kasi Lemmons](https://time.com/6241582/i-wanna-dance-with-somebody-movie-whitney-houston-real-story/ "undefined")’ 2007 _Talk to Me_, I’d never heard of Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene, and perhaps you haven’t either. Greene was a disc jockey, community activist, and all-around big personality in 1960s and ’70s Washington, D.C. He’d done a stint in prison for bank robbery, earning parole by talking a suicidal fellow prisoner down from the top of a flagpole. (“It took me six months to get him to go up there,” he later quipped.) In this limber, entertaining, heartfelt biopic, Greene is played by [Don Cheadle](https://time.com/6077392/no-sudden-move-review/ "undefined"); when we first meet him, he’s still in prison, eager to secure a job as a D.J. He collars a sophisticated, beautifully dressed man who’s there to visit his incarcerated brother. That man is radio executive Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and eventually—but not without balking—he’ll give Greene that job, at Washington radio station WOL. Later, he’ll become Greene’s manager, hoping to make him a TV and stand-up-comedy star. Later still, he’ll become a hugely successful Washington radio personality himself. But _Talk to Me_ is mostly Greene’s story, and Lemmons and Cheadle, in this marvelously candid performance, bring him to life beautifully. Greene is a guy who tells it like it is. On the air at WOL, he risks the station’s license with his plain-talk profanity about the city’s everyday problems, though what he’s dishing out is really just common good sense rendered in rough language. But his real shining moment comes when he takes to the airwaves to calm his fellow citizens after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. He acknowledges their anger, even as he reminds them that looting and violence are the antithesis of everything King stood for. _Talk to Me_ not only captures the vibe of a person, a place, a time, and a way of being; it gets to the heart of what being an American really means. All good reasons to get to know Petey Greene. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353559/talk-to-me/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353559/talk-to-me/"},"headline":"Talk to Me","datePublished":"2026-02-04T12:52:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T01:04:58.989Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353559/talk-to-me/","keywords":["movies"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3ccb85109eb067d1/6998cd4bd32e93475bcd7b52/Underappreciated-Movies-Talk-to-Me.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Stephanie Zacharek","jobTitle":"Film Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/"}],"creator":"Stephanie Zacharek","articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3ccb85109eb067d1/6998cd4bd32e93475bcd7b52/Underappreciated-Movies-Talk-to-Me.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353559/talk-to-me/","name":"Talk to Me"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Most Underappreciated Movies of the 21st Century","description":"","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/2Xfr54wO/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2026-02-04T12:20:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/2Xfr54wO.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353559/talk-to-me/","duration":"PT1M22S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353559/talk-to-me/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```