Review: Queen & Slim

Queen & Slim
Cert: 15 / 132 mins / Dir. Melina Matsoukas / Trailer



Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya headline Queen & Slim, a crime thriller from screenwriter Lena Waithe*¹ and director Melina Matsoukas. In suburban Ohio, when young Afro-American couple Angela (Jodie-Smith) and Earnest (Kaluuya) are returning from their first date, a traffic-stop by a white patrol officer results in a bad turn of events turning much, much worse. The pair make a hasty decision to flee the scene, beginning a cautious bee-line to Florida in a bid to flee the country.

This is an odd movie, usually in a good way but it's tonally all over the place. The most meandering getaway you've ever seen passes through neighbourhoods of biting social drama, breath-holding tension and laugh-out-loud comedy alike. At some points these are structurally juxtaposed to suggest emotional pit-stops, although at others this feels like the scripts of two different movies have been filmed using the same cast.

Saved by committed performances all round, the film is quite remarkable. Although I'm deducting a point because it should have ended around six minutes earlier than it did*². Matsoukas aims for Off-Beat™ and in that regard Queen & Slim is a notable success, although perhaps more in the experiment itself than its conclusion...

Well Bonnie & Clyde is the most obvious touchstone, but since characters within the movie reference this I'm disallowing it. Think of The Hate U Give meets Blue Ruin meets the first half of From Dusk Till Dawn meets Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.

Yeah..



If you know you're already onboard, sure.



It is.



Let's not go mad here.



That's possible.



There isn't.



Level 2: Daniel Kaluuya is in this, and he was in that Black Panther alongside Lupita 'Kanata' Nyong'o, Sam 'Windu' Jackson and Andy 'Snoke' Serkis.





*¹ Credit where it's due, the story was developed between Waithe and James Frey. Oh yes, that James Frey. So while several high-profile moments in this thriller come off as frankly unbelievable, bear in mind they're probably from the guy who can't even get his own life-story right... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Spoilers - highlight-to-read: Mate, have the pair in the standoff on the runway, have them look at each other, have them look back in unison at the police then cut to the directed-by credit. That's how you end the movie, with ambiguity. As a point of discussion, of uncertainty, of hope. Because if you have to spend the final six minutes with slow-motion sequences telling your audience that white cops shooting unarmed black civilians is A Bad Thing, you've probably wasted the two hours before that...
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