A raw piece of agit-prop, afflicted by murky wishful thinking, Melina Matsoukas Queen and Slim (2019) demonstrates the power that even an ineptly made film can achieve on the basis of its historical moment. You can't simply dismiss Queen and Slim although it's unsuccessful, naive, and sentimental -- the movie, which takes police shootings of African-Americans as its theme, has the courage of its convictions: it doesn't make sense, seems implausible, and is formulaic in its plotting and imagery, yet the acting is engaged with the subject matter, and the crude filmmaking is sporadically engaging.
For some inexplicable reason, a successful female criminal defense lawyer goes on a date with a Black clerk who works at a Costco. The two are mismatched and, later, one of them remarks that there wouldn't have been a "second date" if events hadn't ensued so catastrophically as shown by the picture. The man (played by Daniel Kaluuya) is religious; he prays before eating. He has selected a trashy cafe for their meal -- an inexplicable choice for a first date which he justifies as saying that the business is "black-owned." The two are driving away from the cafe when the woman, tinkering with the man's cell-phone, causes him to get distracted and swerve erratically on the snowy streets of Cleveland. A White cop pulls them over and bullies both of them in a vicious way. A struggle ensues and the man ends up grabbing the cop's gun and shooting him in the head. It's not really the fault of the Black man and woman -- the cop shot first, wounding the lawyer. All of this is captured on the dash-board video in the squad car and, of course, to White viewers, it seems that the shooting is clearly defensible from the standpoint of self-defense -- the Black couple didn't do anything wrong. I assume, however, that Black audiences would view the situation differently. Although the man counsels that they wait for the police to come, the criminal defense lawyer, attuned to what she regards as the practical realities of the situation, urges them to flee. And, so, the couple set off on their adventure, mismatched and suspicious at first, but, as the road movie, ensues, ultimately falling in love. Hailed as the romantic Black "Bonnie and Clyde", the couple is embraced by all African-Americans that they meet as courageous freedom-fighters -- the cop killed in the affray has earlier gunned down an innocent Black man and been acquitted of those charges. After a series of adventures, the couple are betrayed by dope-smoking Black Judas -- the authorities have offered a 250,000 bounty on each of their heads. Just at the point where we expect the protagonists to escape by plane, the inevitable occurs as an army of White cops converge on the airstrip. The movie is completely predictable down to the final showdown and there is a big sex scene that is wholly gratuitous but certainly erotically charged and picturesque. The odd couple have exchanged roles -- now the cool lady lawyer is passionate and religious; the unassuming clerk from Costco has grown into his role as cop-killer and Black avenger. After their death, the two are famed and tee-shirts showing their features proliferate throughout the ghetto and, at last, a big mural celebrating them is unveiled on the wall of a slum Baptist Church. The script is crude, as if written by crayon, but parts of the film are undeniably effective and the genre formula of the doomed lovers pursued by squadrons of heartless cops but protected by the local folks is engaging whatever the qualms that one might have with some (many) of the details. The story is sure-fire -- Bonnie and Clyde, Thelma and Louise and Fritz Lang's They live by Night -- even if the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
The film indulges itself in racial stereotypes that should be overtly offensive, even though the film-maker seemingly identifies as African-American. For instance, there's an awful caricature of a Black pimp with his stable of supplicant "foxy ho's" -- a sort of retrograde minstrel show characterization that White directors wouldn't even suggest, let along portray in living color. The picture tries to hedge its bets -- there 'complication' and 'ambiguity' read as timidity. A little boy inspired by the couple's exploits joins a Black Lives Matter rally, tear gas is thrown around, and the child ends up shooting a Black cop -- this is supposed to balance out the message (Blue lives matter too.) The coup de grace to the attractive lady fugitive is administered by a white female cop who gets hysterical and pulls the trigger too soon -- is this supposed to show that female cops are unreliable? By far, the best part of the movie is the beginning 40 minutes -- there's a horror film atmosphere to the build-up to the first cop-killing. The very real terror and confusion that the fugitives show at the outset is scary and compelling. The first few vignettes, involving an aggressive fat Black man who salutes the cop-killers as heroes and a terrifying teenage C-store attendant, are the best things in the movie. The couple bicker mercilessly and the camera is positioned to never show them in the same shot -- a dislocation from our expectations that is particularly effective given the characters' tight confinement in the car. The messages take over in the second half and things grow increasingly implausible. The fugitives stop to dance to the slow Blues at a juke joint in the deep South -- it's a pretty sequence but destructive to the film's narrative impetus. Later, the fugitives pause to ride a horse (shades of the ending of John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle) and the big, spectacular sex scene intercut with the little Black kid killing the cop at the rally, is just dimwitted and tasteless. A scene with Chloe Sevigny at at a sort of "underground railway station", a safe-house in Savannah, makes no sense and is complicated by a pointless sequence in which the lady lawyer jumps out of the back upper story of a house (for no good reason), dislocates her shoulder and, then, has to have the injury "snapped back in place" by the Costco clerk. The ending is an exercise in sheer bathos and, although, impressive in a primitive way, won't stand any close analysis. In summary, aspects of the film have the nasty, pulp edge of early Gregg Araki, but the picture loses its way after a strong beginning and the end is meretricious nonsense. Nonetheless, the film's themes are engaging and topical and the movie's sheer earnestness is compelling, at least, at first.
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