First Hit: This film failed to deliver on its potential.
The potential in this film is to tell the story about how people of color are targeted for police harassment and random shootings. It failed to make this the central and poignant topic and the primary focus of the movie. Instead, it took a compelling beginning and turned it into a story about two people searching for someone who’ll love them the way they want to be loved.
That’s not to say that a love story based on a horrible event isn’t unusual, but with our country’s problems of race, it seemed like this story had the potential to tell us something about where we’ve gone wrong. Instead, it became the side story.
Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) and Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) meet on a Tinder date. Their differences are immediately evident as she’s well dressed, proper in manners, slow to share personal stuff, and an attorney. He’s dressed down more, a bit lazy in table manners, open, and is very close with his family.
The conversation at the table is a kind jab and parry type and with a sense of respect. Giving her a ride home, she steals his phone and, in an attempt, to grab it back, Slim yanks the steering wheel and the car swerves.
They are stopped by a policeman who is belligerent and pushy in his actions and requests towards Slim. As a lawyer, Queen takes umbrage to the policeman’s behavior and talks back to him. She tells him that she’s an attorney, and he has no right to be doing what he’s doing to Slim. Slim, on the other hand, is compliant and even lets the officer search his trunk. Queen points out that the cop has no cause to do this, a scuffle ignites, the policeman draws his gun, fires, and hits Queen in the leg. Slim knocks the policeman down, the weapon falls loose and Slim picks it up and shoots the officer in the head.
The officer dies, and Queen convinces Slim to make a run for it.
That’s the premise. The rest of the film is about how the black community looks up to these outlaws and their admiration for them standing up to the law. In support, many aid them in escaping the manhunt. They meet up with people who help them along the way and end up finding a connection to fly them out of Florida and on to Cuba where they will live for the rest of their lives. That’s the plan.
The edge created by the opening scenes is lost as the film drifts off into a love story with their deed becoming a side story and only there to keep them running - together.
Kaluuya was alright in this role. It seemed to me that the lost direction in this story took away several possibilities. Turner-Smith was excellent as Queen. To belabor a point; the film’s story veered away from what could have been a powerful statement. Bokeem Woodbine, as Queen’s Uncle Earl, was terrific. His arguments with his live-in girlfriends were amusing. Lena Waithe wrote this mediocre screenplay that ended up focusing on being a love story and not about what brought these two together. Melina Matsoukas did an adequate job of presenting this story and many of the sets and scenes (like hiding under the floor) worked really well.
Overall: This film failed to capture my attention to a subject that has been too much part of the news.