“QUEEN AND SLIM”: Love on the run

Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith

Mel Gibson, Sean Penn

Published December 2, 2019 by Robert W. Butler at Butler’s Cinema Scene

My rating: B (Now showing)

131 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Bonnie and Clyde” (or perhaps “Thelma and Louise”) meet Black Lives Matter in “Queen and Slim,” the impressive feature film directing debut of television and video veteran Melina Matsoukas.

Penned by Lena Waithe (an Emmy winner for her writing for Netflix’s “Master of None”) from a story by James Frey, this tale of lovers on the run soars on a pair of killer perfs from stars Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith.

We meet Queen and Slim — they have real names but we won’t learn them until the movie’s end — in the midst of a disastrous first Tinder date.  Queen (Turner-Smith) is a lawyer bummed because one of her clients has received the death penalty.  She called up Slim because she likes his looks and because she badly needs to vent to someone.

They’re about as different as can be. She’s angry, cynical, judgmental and, on some level, elitist.

He says grace before eating (even in restaurants), has a license plate that reads “Trust God,” works at Costco, doesn’t drink and maintains a live-and-let-live attitude. He eats with his mouth open; she’s grossed out.

He’s driving her home after what will surely be their one and only date when they’re pulled over by a cop. A white cop (played very well by country star Sturgill Simpson).  Things quickly escalate when the hot-headed Queen throws accusations at the officer. Within seconds she has a bullet hole in her leg and the policeman is dead, shot by Slim with his own service weapon.

Slim wants to stay put; Queen quickly convinces him he’ll be shot on sight.

“We can’t just leave him here.”

“Yes we can.”

“I’m not a criminal.”

“You are now.”

They take off with a vague plan to find Queen’s uncle in New Orleans and then, maybe, catch a plane to Cuba.

Bokeem Woodbine, Indya Moore

“Queen & Slim” works nicely on several levels. First there’s the suspenseful run from Cleveland through Kentucky and Tennessee to New Orleans, then a long drive down to Florida.  Along the way the pair go through several vehicles, briefly kidnap a rural sheriff (Benito Martinez), find time for a slow dance at a bluesy roadhouse, survive car trouble and a gun-obsessed convenience store clerk (Colby Boothman).

There’s a tension-filled stay at the home of Queen’s uncle (a terrific Bokeem Woodbine), a third-rate pimp with a crew of hookers who are continually catering to his fragile ego.  At least the overnight allows the fugitives to do a bit of cosmetic maintenance, giving themselves new shorter ‘dos, shaving Slim’s facial hair and providing new wardrobes: maroon sweats for him, a zebra-skin patterned mini-dress replacing her suffocating white turtleneck.

Of course, “Queen & Slim” is a love story, with our two protagonists moving from panic and backbiting to a romance born of desperation and fatalism.

And the film effectively (if occasionally heavy-handedly) addresses the fears and anger of black citizenry toward the powers that be. Within hours of the fatal shooting the policeman’s dash cam footage is posted on the Internet, essentially dividing America into two camps, with half screaming for death for the cop killers and the other half declaring the officer a racist who deserved what he got.

Periodically the outlaws run into someone who recognizes them; instead of being turned in they are given shelter — in one instance a black cop allows them to escape. It slowly dawns on the pair that they’ve become folk heroes; around the country there are Ferguson-style confrontations (sometimes fatal) between protestors and police.

At moments the social commentary threatens to slip into the creakily melodramatic; Matsoukas’ inventive direction usually finds a way to finesse these passages.  There’s one intriguing segment in which we eavesdrop on the thoughts of our two heroes; at other times the film has a sort of dreamlike quality — perhaps an attempt to capture the sort of otherworldly daze that clouds one’s consciousness after driving all night.

And given the dire predicament of Queen and Slim, there’s a surprising amount of humor on display.

Not everything here works, but mostly it does.

| Robert W. Butler

Read the original review and more reviews at Butler’s Cinema Scene