I saw the preview for Black and Blue before seeing Midsommar Director’s Cut. There were a lot of previews but this one was the only preview that caught my attention when suddenly a group of people behind me said, “This is so stupid.” Bear in mind that the other previews included 21 Bridges, which in spite of my love for the cast, holds no interest for me. There were plenty of other previews that could be considered dumb with all kinds of cast demographics, but the one with the black woman as the protagonist is stupid. Or was it the premise that cops in Louisiana could be corrupt? I obviously don’t agree with the following statement, but Midsommar could be stupid. The one that they rejected was the one that they could not relate to for whatever reason, the one that they felt completely comfortable deriding audibly in a theater filled with people who would not talk again until the almost three-hour movie ended, and frankly are the kind of people that would try to hush anyone if they were talking right before the previews.
For me, Black and Blue was on my must see list. It seems like someone decided to transform the definition of misogynoir into a narrative and threw it on screen. Naomie Harris is the star, and if you think that you don’t know Harris, you’re wrong because she is a chameleon: the mother in Moonlight, Moneypenny in Daniel Craig’s Bond films, one of the tight knit group of survivors in 28 Days Later, completely unrecognizable character in Pirates of the Caribbean. Harris plays Alicia West (related to The Flash’s Iris West-Allen?) who is a rookie cop with a body cam camera pointed in the wrong direction as both the gangsters and the cops are trying to kill her.
I watch a lot of movies so usually I can predict how these problems are going to get resolved, but I had no idea how West was going to get out of this mess. I love a bleak ending, but I could not handle watching this tiny black woman in jeopardy. Yes, she holds her own intellectually, gets called a “stuntwoman” for pulling a few Michael Myers moves and whoops some ass when given the opportunity, but I needed her to be unrealistic and taking everyone out to make up for my emotional distress over her plight.
I wish that Blumhouse Productions, not Screen Gems, a division of Sony, did Black and Blue because while I thought the story and its resolution was obviously an exaggerated microcosm about race, justice, crime and authority in America, Blumhouse always finds a way to underscore and highlight the point just enough for the imagery to burrow itself in your head whereas visually this film is shot very realistically and never considers taking it to that subconscious level that taps into your primal understanding of the movie and what it is saying about the world that we live in. This film is very comfortable in the action crime thriller drama genre, and if it injected a dash of sci fi, it would be immortal like Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days.
The realistic strategy does work on another level: marketing. You won’t attract Presidon’t’s displeasure so your film won’t get shut down. Black and Blue is mostly attracting black audiences. The filmmakers seem hyper conscious that even if another cop, the proverbial one good cop, is taking out the bad apples, the Blue Lives Matter people will start complaining. The film never even whispers Black Lives Matter, but is aware even at the beginning of the film that the pivotal word in the phrase black woman cop isn’t cop, it is black, which makes her less of a cop regardless of whether or not she is principled, a veteran or innocent. A black woman cop taking out other cops would still look bad so the film only allows her to let loose on the black criminals in the film, not the bad apples. The bad apples are depicted as criminals, but they are criminals with more inherent authority than West. The misogyny is played in a more subtle way: whistles, bitch, etc. so while I was relieved that there were no rapey scenarios, I still think that the filmmakers could have used a woman writer to really flesh out that tension in the story.
Black and Blue does make a radical point. West came from this beleaguered community, but she has less privilege there than the bad apples. Neither the cops, nor her community, gives her any benefit of the doubt. The filmmakers play on the fact that the law-abiding black citizens reject her because they also know that in a game of chicken between a good, black woman cop and bad apples, the bad apples will kill everyone and get a paid vacation. This movie depicts how immunity for murderers and criminals who wear blue create an atmosphere reminiscent to Laurie Strode looking for help during the denouement of Halloween—no one is home for self-preservation.
Because the criminals think that they are working with the bad apples, they are given a little more freedom of movement and power in the community, but that power and freedom can be eliminated whenever it suits the bad apples. For the black community to resolve issues, it deliberately rejects a traditional route that is an option for West. Don’t get out, go through. Respectability is no longer an option, and there is explicitly a call to black criminals to wake up to how they are being exploited, which harkens back to a theme explored by The First Purge and 1970s blaxploitation films. What if the black criminals rejected the only capitalist door offered to them and used their expertise to challenge corrupt authority instead of embracing it? Mike Colter, best known as Luke Cage, should play more bad guys because he is one of the few actors who wasn’t shackled by having extra layers put on him. He may be a criminal in league with the cops, but he is also depicted as having more of a moral code than them and is less a villain than an anti-hero.
There is also a call to fence sitters among the cops, but I think that it could be viewed as a call to white Americans to confront whether or not they want to be allied with power at all costs or principles. Black and Blue makes it clear that regardless of whether or not all black people have power, are willing to do the right thing and have the tools to do the right thing, those actions won’t be respected or carried out unless white people use what power they do have to enforce those efforts otherwise the bad guys win. If white people use their power, there is less of a backlash whereas if a black person with authority does, there is still a potential that she will become a victim of an extrajudicial execution.
If you can’t handle stress, then don’t see Black and Blue if you like Harris. If you’re looking for a solidly entertaining, and surprisingly, occasionally hilarious movie, then check it out. It is definitely not one of those movies that will become a cult hit or looked back upon as a masterpiece, but maybe it will inspire a sci fi filmmaker to move the bar forward and fully flesh out the potential of the premise of this film.