Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bokeem Woodbine, Chloe Sevigny, Flea, Sturgill Simpson, Indya Moore
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 132 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2020
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The title is something of an enigma because the two central characters are never referred to as Queen or as Slim during the whole film. In fact, the newspaper reports their names as Ernest Hines and Angela Johnson. Be that as it may, they turn out to be unexpectedly interesting characters.
There is a lot of cross reference to them as a contemporary Bonnie and Clyde. While they do get entangled with the police and are pursued across America, they are not outlaws in the sense of Bonnie and Clyde. Another helpful reference might be to The Odd Couple. This is a strong African-American film, the central couple, the screenwriter and the director (although Daniel Kaluuya is a British actor).
This is a road movie, Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith both forceful and vulnerable) and Slim (Daniel kill Kaluuya from Get Out and Black Panther) driving through Ohio, Kentucky, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Florida. The initial emphasis is on the odd couple, two strangers meeting on a date in a diner, he a rather ordinary citizen, devoted to his father, she a lawyer whose recent client has just been executed. They seem to have very little in common and the date is a flop. However, in a moment of lapse in driving, they are pulled over by an aggressive cop, obnoxiously racist, who draws a gun – and, in the consequence scuffle, Queen is shot in the leg and then shoots the cop.
The dilemma. To wait for the police? To drive off and escape? However, the cop had phoned in to headquarters the details of the case. And so, the pursuit is on.
What follows is the drama on the road but there are a whole lot of incidental anecdotes along the way which makes the pursuit and escape more telling. The car breaking down, their being helped by the local sheriff, taking his car. They encounter a young man at a service station shop who just wants to hold their gun. When their next car breaks down, they take it to a garage, the owner knowing who they are, but his young son coming in, facing them as heroes, and his going to a race rally the next day and violently confronting a policeman in a rage.
But, the main stop is with Queen’s uncle, whom she had defended in court, a Vietnam veteran, running a group of girls in Louisiana. But, while they change their appearance, the police are on to them and the uncle (Bokeem Woodbine) gives them a car and a reference to a buddy he fought within Vietnam.
As they travelled to this contact, they stop at a bar, live music, they dance, are recognised and supported. Then, in their exhilaration, Queen sits on the front seat window exhilarated with her arms in the air in the wind, eventually persuading Slim to do the same thing. They arrive at the friend’s house, hide, then escape, flying to Florida to get a plane which will fly them out of the country.
It is no spoiler to say that they do not succeed. There is quite some pathos at the brutality of the ending – and there are certainly more than echoes of Bonnie and Clyde.
Peter Malone MSC is an Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting.
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