Queen and Slim - Review

Queen and Slim

“Queen & Slim” is a 2019 American romantic drama film directed by Melina Matsoukas (in her feature directorial debut) and written by Lena Waithe, from a story by James Frey and Waithe. The film stars Daniel Kaluuya (Sicario and Get Out), Jodie Turner-Smith, Bokeem Woodbine (FX Fargo 2), Chloë Sevigny (HBO’s Big Love), Flea (base player for Red Hot Chili Peppers), Sturgill Simpson and Indya Moore.

The story picks up on a cold snowy winter evening inside a Black owned roadside Ohio diner. Inside on a first time “Tender” date are criminal defense attorney, “Angela” aka  "Queen" (Jodie Turner-Smith), and “Dennis” aka "Slim" (Daniel Kaluuya), a retail Costco worker. “Queen” reveals early on that the only reason she agreed to a date with “Slim” is because she had a bad day at work. A client of hers was sentenced to the death penalty, and she doesn't believe the state has the right to take his life, regardless of his being found guilty. Needless but fair enough to say their date did not go well, at least as “Slim” originally had hoped for.

As he drives “Queen” home he is weaving about distracted with his usage of his phone that also caused him to fail to use a turn signal. It attracts the attention of a white police officer who pulls the two over and makes “Slim” step out of the car and asks to search his car. “Slim” begrudgingly but politely cooperates with the officer despite “Queens” continuous legal based protests. But as the officer rifles through his trunk, “Slim” asks him if he could "hurry up" as it's a cold night. The annoyed officer suddenly draws his gun on “Slim”, and when “Queen” gets out of the car and announces her intent to record the incident on her phone, he fires at her when she reaches for it, grazing her leg. “Slim” reflexively tackles the officer grabbing his gun shooting him in the chest. “Queen” tells Slim that they either have to go on the run or they will spend the rest of their lives rotting in prison.

REVIEW: For months there have been much clamorous vigorous ballyhoo that “Queen and Slim” was some kind of modern Black adaptation of the 1968 Oscar nominated Best Picture film “Bonnie and Clyde”. That film told the story of the real-life of Texan Bonnie Parker chance encounter with a charming young drifter by the name of Clyde Barrow. Clyde has dreams of a life of crime that will free him from the hardships of the Great Depression. The two fall in love and begin a crime spree that extended from Oklahoma to Texas before their deaths on a rural road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana ambushed by Texas police officers on May 23, 1934.

But Bonnie and Clyde chose their life of crime as their lively hood. I believe the “Queen and Slim” story delves more into a decent couple actions through the tragic unintended consequences of killing a cop. Specifically, I see this film more similarly aligned structurally and drawn from an entertainment surface perspective with the 1991 “Thelma  and Louise” film while also deeply juxtaposed emotionally, culturally and politically with the 1989 “Do the Right Thing” . Borrowing from both films Director Melina Matsoukas  takes on the singular narrative about the choices people randomly and impulsively make with varying degrees of seriousness in their lives. The choices (in the case of the films story) that are filtered through questions from personal growth and maturity have already been subconsciously asked and answered in regards to matters of love, loyalty, mortality, our moral consciousness and matters of life and death. And in this case of “Queen and Slim” it moves its camera lens like a microscope to myopically examining two young soul, probing deeply into their response and choices from probably the most provocative circumstance any one could ever imagine for themselves, ………….  “What would you really do if your killed someone?”

Besides the overall themes of media and race – police and race the film has a lot to offer foundationally. Starting with fine performances from Daniel Kaluuya and Bokeem Woodbine who plays a pimp named “Uncle Earl”. They enlisted  a lot of natural empathy and sincerity via the way of his “Dennis” – a good kid making a bad decision and especially “Uncle Earl” while essentially an entrepreneurial criminal (“pimp”).was not without genuine human compassion, kindness and some appropriately needed tough fatherly advice - love.  And along with some good pacing and smartly drawn seemingly in the moment dialogue, “Queen and Slim” makes a good faith effort of dealing with topical racial subjects looming over the entire country today. But on the other hand, my main criticisms with the film was there it tried to be too broad in examining these issues of race from too many perspectives and at times none at all..

Several times I felt the film meandering randomly about with its scattershot approach of having illogical indiscriminate encounters with people who seemed only to be on the screen at that moment to distinctly offer either their unwavering sympathetic or unsympathetic support to their plight. These encounters didn’t feel either authentic, subtle or organic. Rather something that was more lathered on as cinematic paint just so as to exclusively make the convenient points of “who side are you on”...........the Queen and Slim or the law.

Also there were other instances the film sporadically turned its lens away to seemingly impromptu odd matters that felt more like pure moments of cognitive disconnect with their vague and oblique fixations such as. ……….”I am hungry, you want to eat, let’s go dancing, I want to ride that horse, lets hang out the car window with the wind in my face”.  Justified or not, I got distracted by these scenes, so much so I even forgot they had killed a cop.which was the real gravity and seriousness of  the film.

Finally, while the film has a lot of natural charisma and appeal in its plot, it also had  a lot of moments that intellectually baffled me, mostly through Jodie Turner-Smith portrayal as “Queen”. For someone who initially in the opening diner scene projected herself as a smart, erudite, disciplined and a very self-assured confident lawyer her knee jerk response to leaving the scene after witnessing the killing of a cop, taking the cop’s gun with her no less made no sense to me at all. Her of all people clearly as the more legally aware - consequentially educated of the two, should have been clearly the primary source of clarity of thought and reflection for this event. Instead she devolved simplistically (in my opinion) to being someone relying less on her well-honed training to relying more on ephemeral transit and fleeting emotional solutions that seemingly percolated uncontrollably from past pain, some general anger issues and general emotional clumsiness. Over time I found her “Queen” less and less empathetic during its 2:15 minute running time and more into someone I found increasingly frustrating and wearisome to like or even care about. She of all people should have at least asked……………….“Why not call 911? But she didn’t and so I digress.

In the end right or wrong this is the author’s vision and I feel I have to respect that vision here. But I do think if the two lovers along their mercurial journey into fame or infamy would have had those types of conversations with each other – with others along the way that they met, particularly those more raw basic evoking self-reflective types of questions rooted in “what is the right thing to do here”  verses “what is the wrong thing to do here” the film would have in my opinion had a much deeper, much  broader and far more meaningful impact no matter what the finale or their fates.   

Still, for a solid film directorial debut, Director Melina Matsoukas has crafted a good film that still makes the profound effort into asking, albeit somewhat subliminally, questions about and to ourselves around those well known topical life and death racial struggles still prevalent in America today................ and in that regard and in the end it was a good enough story for me.

3.25 Stars