A rookie, black female police officer becomes the target of three corrupt cops after witnessing them murder a bunch of young drug dealers.
It seems that there are three sore points Black and Blue addresses. The film’s title includes two of them, but wait until we get to the script. The film’s best attributes are its cinematography, Naomie Harris, and Frank Grillo. The mise-en-scène is almost flawless; what you need to see within a shot is there, and the colours are as dark as the heroes and the antiheroes themselves. Harris deserves all the spotlight as, first of all, you wouldn’t tell she’s a Londoner, and secondly, she’s entirely different from her 007 character and anything you have seen her in before. She’s like a whirlwind sucking you into the film’s action and thrill. Grillo, as always, is as tough as they come. I would like to see more: Tyrese Gibson as a non-action character, Reid Scott’s (Kevin) guilt building up to justify his action in the end, and Mike Colter’s (Darius) fury exploding over the murder of his nephew. Finally, the editing is ‘invisible’, guaranteeing the film’s continuity and pacing the film appropriately.
Peter A. Dowling’s script has a few holes. That means that, on more than one occasion, if one asked ‘why didn’t s/he do that?’ the answer would be ‘because that is a plot hole’. I’m not gonna go into details, though. I’ll leave it up to you to spot them and make up your own mind. The focus shifts towards the obvious on this occasion: Stereotyping! Harris is burdened with the film’s emphasis on being a woman, black, and a police officer in a world that undermines the first, degrades the second and hates the third. And, as aforementioned, she’s brilliant. But the real world isn’t really like that. And filmmakers need to be very careful not to turn it like that. See what happened at the cinema in Birmingham, UK, whilst showing Blue Story (2019): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-50541204
Nowadays, everyone seems to be looking for an excuse to accuse someone of saying or doing something inappropriate. To the person offended about a ‘sensitive’ issue, whoever dares to have a different opinion is… racist. And as if that’s not enough, the perpetuation of ‘all cops are pigs’ is very backwards-thinking, old, and cliché (and that comes from a guy who has been arrested quite a few times in his youth). If you think otherwise when you get robbed or attacked, by all means, feel free not to call the police… they are pigs. Even though they are quite well known, I have attached two videos in case you haven’t watched them, urging generalisations to stop.
In case you forgot my third sore point mentioned above, that is none other than the echoing stigmata that the Katrina hurricane has left to the people and city of New Orleans to this very day. I have an eerie feeling that in the future, we will have more films delving into the hair-raising details of the suffering of August 2005. Say, for example, a film on what the doctors had to do…
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Solidarity for all the innocent lives who suffer the atrocities of war!
Stay safe!
