Queen & Slim (2019, R)

I was already interested in this movie, but that interest kicked into high gear after screenwriter Lena Waithe appeared on The Daily Show talking about all that went into her feature film debut. This film is both hard-hitting and beautiful, doing everything by extremes in a truly-gripping way.

They connected on Tinder. After a rocky first date, he was driving her home when he was pulled over for “failing to execute a turn signal.” Minutes later, he was on his knees with a gun pointed at his head. She tried to intervene, the cop shot at her, and he scuffled with the officer to prevent a more lethal shot. They grappled, and the officer wound up dead. Now, they’re doing everything they can to get out of the country. They kept their lives from ending that night, and they’re not about to let those lives become “property of the state” without a fight.

So much amazing stuff in this movie. I love the discourse that immediately surrounds the pair (we’ll go with the title and call them Queen and Slim,) with people in the Black community in particular hailing them as the new Black Panthers and claiming they were avenging an unarmed Black man the officer killed two years earlier, but when it happened, Queen and Slim weren’t thinking about political statements or justice, they weren’t looking to start a hashtag. They were just trying to survive, and for them, their desperate race to the border is an extension of that, but for the communities they pass through, it all becomes so much bigger than the two of them.

I also really love how, while the film gets into both deep social drama and taut suspense, it’s not unrelentingly bleak, not centured wholly on Black pain and racial injustice. Instead, having escaped one brush with death and trying to avoid another (the opening scene reminds us that Ohio is one of the 30 states that still has the death penalty,) Queen and Slim recognize that they need to grab small moments when they can, not putting off brief opportunities for joy in the midst of all the uncertainty and fear.

Daniel Kaluuya is fantastic as Slim, overwhelmed by all that’s happened and wishing he could just go home but trying to be decisive and brave. (Side note: it’s wild to think that I first knew him as Posh Kenneth on Skins. Reminds me of my post about actors I used to think were mediocre, when it turned out I’d just never seen them in a role that was worth their time. In the last couple years, Kaluuya has ably demonstrated that same principle.) I’m not familiar with Jodie Turner-Smith, but she makes an excellent Queen. She can come across as perfunctory and a little brittle, but she’s been scarred from seeing what the system does to the people it dehumanizes, and she throws the full weight of her intellect at the question of their escape.

I won’t get into the details, but the final scenes are truly affecting. It’s been a while since the ending of a movie hit me so hard.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, violence, sexual content, language (including the N-word,) and drinking/smoking/drug use.