Chi McBride

A young man tries to tie up some loose ends before he goes to war in this independent drama from director Neil Abramson. Mike Holland (Nick Cannon) is nineteen years old and has just completed his basic training as a private in the United States Marine Corps. Mike has a four-day leave so he can visit his family for Thanksgiving, and then has orders for combat duty in Iraq. Mike wants to spend time with his family and friends before he ships out, but he doesn't want to tell anyone that he'll be stationed in Iraq. While taking the bus home to Bakersfield, California, Mike meets Cristina (Melonie Diaz), and it doesn't take long for him to realize he's infatuated with her. Mike makes a date to spend some time with Cristina, but he already has a busy schedule over the next four days. Mike catches up with his little sister (Erica Gluck), his doting mother (April Grace) and her taciturn new husband (Tom Sizemore), and sees his estranged father (Chi McBride) for the first time in years. Mike also hangs out with his best friend Jake (Matt O'Leary), but discovers he's begun taking a different path in life while Mike was in boot camp. And Mike happens to meet a disabled soldier back from Iraq (Jay Hernandez) who gives him an idea of what he can expect during his tour of duty. American Son was screened in competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Arguably the most talked-about serialized drama of the 2006-2007 TV season, The Nine made its ABC debut on October 4, 2006 with a bank robbery perpetrated by a pair of low-life siblings on LA's Fidelity Republic Bank. The robbery and the ensuing hostage standoff would last 52 minutes, and two people would die; the series focused on the aftermath, and the profound and disturbing changes in the lives of nine of the people in the bank. The huge ensemble cast included Timothy Daly as Nick Cavanaugh, a cop with a gambling problem; Chi McBride as Malcolm Jones, the seemingly kindly, level-headed bank manager; Kim Raver as ambitious Assistant DA Kathryn Hale; Scott Wolf as Jeremy Kates, arrogant young surgeon; Jessica Collins as Jeremy's girlfriend Lizzie Miller, a hospital social worker; John Billingsley as Egan Foote, a suicidal office drone who unexpectedly turns hero during the standoff; Lourdes Benedicto as Eva Rios, a single-mom bank teller who is linked to Nick Cavanaugh; Camille Guaty as Eva's party-girl sister Franny, who got Eva her job at the bank; Dane Davis as Felicity Jones, daughter of the bank manager, whose sheltered existence was irrevocably shattered by the robbery; and Owain Davis as Lucas Dalton, one of the two thieves. Each episode began with a 10-minute flashback to the robbery, exposing hitherto unrevealed facts about what actually went down during those 52 minutes, and dropping hints as to the interrelationships between the characters before the incident. These flashbacks sometimes answered such nagging questions as "Why does Nick Cavanaugh punch out one of the hostage negotiators?", "Why has Kathryn Hale's hair been cut so short?", and "Why are several of the former hostages making regular prison visits to Lucas Dalton?"; generally, however, more questions were raised than answered. The Nine was cocreated by executive producer Hank Steinberg (Without a Trace and his sister K.J. Steinberg. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bob Odenkirk's jail comedy Let's Go to Prison, stars Will Arnett as Nelson Biederman IV, the son of a judge who ends up being sentenced to serve time in Rossmore State Penitentiary. During one of his rare stints out of incarceration, career criminal John Lyshitski (Dax Shepard) learns of the conviction. John holds a grudge against Nelson's father and decides to get his revenge by going back to jail and making Nelson's stay there as horrible as possible. Chi McBride co-stars as a fellow inmate. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

San Francisco literally stinks to high heaven thanks to the longest garbage strike in the city's history. No one is more upset by the overpowering pungency than the germophobic Monk (Tony Shalhoub), who doubles his efforts to find out who murdered the union boss who called the strike in the first place. Growing progressively unhinged as the smell gets worse, Monk concludes that the guilty party was none other than San Francisco mayor Ray Nicholson (Chi McBride)--and when this proves not to be the case, Monk goes completely off the deep end, accusing rock star Alice Cooper of the dirty deed! Will Monk get his act together in time to find the real killer, or have his phobias finally destroyed his detective skills? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Learn why you should never send your food back and other valuable lessons in this over-the-top comedy set in the food service industry. Dean (Justin Long) and Monty (Ryan Reynolds) are two longtime friends who work as waiters as Shenanigan's, a self-consciously "fun" chain restaurant. Both have been working at the restaurant since they graduated from high school; it's only recently occurred to Dean that he has nothing to show for the last four years of his life but a community college diploma and his name tag from work, and he's developed a sudden urgency to make something of himself. Monty, on the other hand, is more interested in making time with the women on the wait staff at work than accomplishing anything, though his recent relationship with fellow employee Serena (Anna Faris) has rather dramatically crashed and burned. Over the course of an evening at Shenanigan's, Dean and Monty confront obnoxious customers and train timid new employee Mitch (John Francis Daley) while dealing with wildly eccentric chef Raddimus (Luis Guzman), control-freak manager Dan (David Koechner), and a kitchen full of crazed cooks, prep workers, and dish-washers. Waiting was the first feature film from writer and director Rob McKittrick. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Faced with the choice of firing one of his team or losing his own job, House (Hugh Laurie) is given a way out by Vogler (Chi McBride). If he will give a speech on behalf of a new drug developed by Vogler's pharamaceutical firm, House will be completely off the hook. The upshot of all this only serves to deepen the animosity between House and Vogler--but in the meantime, the doctor must tend to the business at hand, including a senator (Joe Morton) with presidential aspirations who is diagnosed with AIDS, and a young woman (Missy Crider) who insists that she can't have suffered a miscarriage because she hasn't had sex in over a year. As expected, both of these patients will soon develop a whole set of confusing and contradictory symptoms...but no one expects the startling turn of events at episode's end! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Created by CSI's Josh Berman, the tension-laden Fox detective series Killer Instinct chronicled the activities of San Francisco's Deviant Crime Unit, headed by the tough, flippant Lt. Matt Cavanaugh (Chi McBride). The unit's mission was to track down and eliminate the most vicious and heinous of serial killers and sex criminals, which may explain why this series received a lot of negative prerelease press; indeed, the acts of violence perpetrated on the victims of these deviants had to be seen to be believed (in the most notorious example, one nutcase rendered his female captives helpless by covering them with poisonous spiders!). Lt. Cavanaugh's top man was Det. Jack Hale (Johnny Messner), who had just come off a six-week leave of absence after the death of his female partner. Hale may or may not have spent several of those months in a mental institution; whatever the case, he was one seriously disturbed individual, and in some ways he was almost as unbalanced as the perpetrators he went after. Endeavoring to keep Hale "on program" was his new partner, Det. Danielle Carter (Kristin Lehman), a former forensic lab assistant. Executive-produced by Charles Craig (The X-Files) and Ed Zuckerman (Law & Order), the weekly, hour-long Killer Instinct debuted September 23, 2005. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Chi McBride makes his first series appearance as billionaire entrepreneur Edward Vogler, the new chairman of the board at Princeton-Plainsboro. Assuming that his position gives him license to call all the shots, Vogler wastes no time throwing his weight around--beginning with his promise to donate $100 million to the clinic on the condition that Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) is fired immediately! Things don't get any better for House when he is forced to resort to subterfuge to provide proper treatment for 32-year-old cosmetics CEO Carly Fontano (Sarah Chalke), who for no apparent reason has suddenly become paralyzed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Shot almost entirely on a two-and-a-half-story recreation of a full-size operating airport terminal, this romantic comedy from director Steven Spielberg revolves around an Eastern European man by the name of Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), whose plans of immigrating to New York were hastened by a violent coup in his home country. Unfortunately, Viktor finds himself on the wrong end of a nasty technicality while en route to America: His passport was issued from a country, which, during its upheaval, ceased to exist in an official capacity. Unauthorized to leave Kennedy Airport upon his arrival and unable to return home, Viktor finds himself exiled inside the terminal's international transit lounge. Though airport official Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci) views Viktor as an annoying bureaucratic glitch, other airport employees -- including a beautiful flight attendant by the name of Amelia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) -- come to see him as a welcome, if unofficial, addition to their numbers. As the days stretch on into months, the terminal transforms from an intimidating atmosphere of forced assimilation into a country within itself, complete with culture, ambition, status, complex diversity, and the need for love. The supporting cast includes Diego Luna, Chi McBride, Kumar Pallana, Zoe Saldana, Eddie Jones, and Jude Ciccolella. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

A thief and a lawman join forces to hunt down a common enemy in this action thriller. Tony Fait (DMX) is a master thief who, along with his crew (Gabrielle Union, Anthony Anderson, and Drag-On), pulls off a major score when they steal a cache of highly valuable black diamonds. However, the hard-as-nails Tony has a soft spot for his young daughter Vanessa (Paige Hurd), and Ling (Mark Dacascos), a former detective turned ruthless criminal, kidnaps Vanessa, demanding a ransom from Tony for her return -- the stash of black diamonds. The jewels have already been stolen, however, from Tony's fence Archie (Tom Arnold), and are now in the hands of a powerful underworld boss (Chi McBride). Determined to get back his daughter whatever the cost, Tony and his gang set out to find both Ling and the diamonds, but he soon gets some invaluable help from an unlikely corner -- Su (Jet Li), a government agent from Taiwan who was once Ling's partner, and has an old score to settle with him. Cradle 2 the Grave also features Kelly Hu and Roxana Brusso. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Undercover Brother began life as an animated series on the Internet. The satirical cartoon was created by novelist and screenwriter John Ridley (Three Kings) for the website urbanentertainment.com. Ridley wrote the screenplay with Michael McCullers, co-writer of the Austin Powers sequels, and it was directed by Malcolm D. Lee (Spike Lee's cousin, and the writer/director of The Best Man). The film stars Eddie Griffin (of TV's Malcolm and Eddie) as Undercover Brother, he of the gold Cadillac convertible and huge Afro, who uses gadgets and disguises to steal from the rich and give to the poor. His activities are discovered by the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D., a spy organization devoted to subverting The Man (Robert Trumbull) and his henchman, Mr. Feather (Chris Kattan), who use their power over the media to demean black people and destroy racial unity. The spy organization is run by The Chief (Chi McBride), who is constantly screaming at his subordinates. They include Sistah Girl (Aunjanue Ellis), a beautiful martial artist, Conspiracy Brother (Dave Chappelle), who sees white supremacist plots everywhere, and Smart Brother (Gary Anthony Williams, who provided the voice of Undercover Brother in the cartoon), who supplies the operatives with gadgets and information. When a popular black political figure, General Boutwell (Billy Dee Williams), calls a press conference, presumably to announce his presidential candidacy, and instead announces that he's opening a chain of fried chicken restaurants, the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. rightly suspects foul play, and recruits Undercover Brother to look into it. He goes undercover as an uptight buppie to work for The Man, but his cover is soon blown, and the seductive White She Devil (Denise Richards) is sent in to use her feminine wiles to destroy Undercover Brother. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide