Moses the Black: “No One Can Serve Two Masters” 

Moses the Black: “No One Can Serve Two Masters” 

By Marge Hynes, Writer

Moses the Black imagines a modern-day Chicago gang leader, Malik, whose life echoes the brutal conversion of one of the Church’s most arresting saints. The film asks the viewer to remain, uncomfortably, inside the world humanity constructs without Christ: blood, death, sin, and no guarantee of catharsis. Sounds like Hell? It should. Hell is, after all, the absence of God.

Moses the Black is a violent, restless meditation on repentance and guilt, and on the fact that God does not call the “right” person by our standards (just look at the apostles!), but the one we would least expect, and perhaps least prefer. As Lent approaches, the Church once again asks us to look honestly at sin, death, and our need for mercy, without any so-called aesthetic distance. This film meets us in that desert.

Quick Details

Directed by Yelena Popovic (Man of God, about the life of St. Nectarios of Aegina), the film features:

• Omar Epps as Malik
• Wiz Khalifa as 2wo-3ree, his right-hand man
• Quavo as Straw, his rival
• Chukwudi Iwuji as St. Moses the Black

Produced by Alexandros Potter and Yelena Popovic for Simeon Faith, with backing from G-Unit Film and Television, Taylor Gang Films, and BrooklynWorks Films.

Entering the Desert

Moses the Black plunges us into disorder from the very first scene. The film opens in a sun-scorched desert. Monks lie dead in the sand. One man stumbles through the aftermath. Among the bodies is St. Moses the Black himself.

We are given no context. We do not know who these men are, how they died, or why we should care. The film offers no pause for explanation or comfort. It is disorienting, and that is deliberate.

The story has been introduced to us as a contemporary tale of gang violence in Chicago. So, why are we transported to the Egyptian desert? Why monks? Why start with death? For those who appreciate ambiguity in film, the opening is both jarring and excellent.

The audience is placed in the same state as the protagonist. We are uneasy, alert, searching for meaning. Malik lives in a world surrounded by death and violence. Everything is fractured. As he navigates chaos, so do we.

Only later do the two worlds (the fourth-century Egyptian desert and modern Chicago, the martyr and the gang leader) come into focus. The same call links them: to follow Christ. That call does not promise safety, clarity, or comfort. It promises a cross, and it demands everything.

The Saints Choose Us

One of my favorite scenes in the film is also its calmest. Malik sits at the dining table with his grandmother, sharing a meal. She hands him a prayer card of St. Moses the Black and mentions that Moses was once a gang member like him. Just like that, St. Moses enters Malik’s life.

I have always felt that we do not so much choose our saints (perhaps more accurately, our friends in Heaven) as they choose us. Or rather, God chooses them for us, often through the ordinary channels of human love and prayer. After this small moment, sharing a meal with his grandmother, St. Moses begins appearing again and again in Malik’s life, calling him to something higher. And with that call comes a hard truth St. Moses himself once lived and proclaimed: those who take up the sword will die by the sword.

I find this reflects a central truth of Catholic theology. In the sacrament of Confirmation, we are reminded that the Spirit chooses us for a mission beyond our imagining. Saints participate in that same Spirit’s work, guiding us toward holiness in ways we cannot orchestrate or predict.

“You Can’t Sit On Two Seats”

Malik does not become instantly virtuous. He remains intensely enmeshed in a world of gang violence, yet the film makes clear that an uprooting has already begun. I wrote down his line, “You can’t sit on two seats,” because it captures this tension perfectly. His gang senses the change before he can even articulate it, and the audience witnesses him grow softer, more charitable, and slower to anger.

This tension ultimately drives Malik into the sanctuary of a church, holding his grandmother’s prayer card. Surrounded by Marian and saintly iconography, including a depiction of Saint Moses the Black, he confesses to a priest that he feels unworthy of God’s call. The priest responds resolutely: God forgives.

Malik comes to understand that he cannot cling simultaneously to the loyalty and power of his gang and to the call of Christ. Every vision of Saint Moses the Black pulls him toward one master and away from the other, guiding him step by step toward total surrender.

So… Should You Watch This?

Moses the Black is not an easy watch. The violence is intense. The language is vulgar. Yet beneath the grit, the film is very serious about faith, God’s mercy, and the radical surrender required to follow Jesus.

As Pope Francis reflected on the woman caught in adultery: 

‘Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again’ . . . God’s face is the face of a merciful father who is always patient.
— Pope Francis, Angelus, 17 March 2013

Moses the Black opens in theaters January 30. Watch the trailer here and click here to purchase tickets!

Our latest episode of A Resounding Yes! features Yelena Popovic, the film’s writer, director, and co-producer. Listen on Spotify here and Apple Podcasts here!

Saint Moses the Black, pray for us!