Mark Reviews Movies: BLACK AND BLUE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 24, 2019

Screenwriter Peter A. Dowling doesn't quite know what to do with his corker of a premise for Black and Blue. The gist of it is that a rookie police officer is hunted by both crooked cops and a group of drug dealers.

There is no real safe haven for Alicia West (Naomie Harris), as she spends the course of a day running and hiding from murderous narcotics officers, in a part of New Orleans that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The system failed the people of this place, and to their eyes, Alicia, who grew up here but left to join the Army after the lingering effects of the storm became apparent, is just part of that system now.

The bad cops, who murdered a trio of drug dealers they were in cahoots with, want her dead. The surviving gang gets false information from those cops and, from that, also want Alicia dead. As a consequence of her uniform, most of the local population doesn't want the trouble of a cop in their homes, and as a result of Alicia's specific history with this place, the rest of them don't particularly care if she lives or dies.

After the death of her mother, Alicia has returned to New Orleans. It's her third week as a cop. She has developed a friendly relationship with her new partner Kevin (Reid Scott), a family man who seems decent but certainly takes advantage of the perks of his uniform—such as not paying for coffee and snacks at a local shop.

The first sign of overt tension for Alicia comes at the store, run by Milo "Mouse" Jackson (Tyrese Gibson). There, one of her old friends Missy (Nafessa Williams) scolds Alicia for talking to her son and pretends not to know her.

Characters in the movie repeatedly express an "us vs. them" mentality, whether it's the cops against the locals (The movie opens with Alicia being accosted by a pair of cops, before they realize she's also an officer—and not feeling a lick of shame about their behavior, because, after all, she knows the deal) or the locals' distrust of the cops. There's a clear racial element to all of this (The title alone is kind of a giveaway), but Dowling seems uncomfortable exploring it in any significant way.

Without that examination, this reductionist perspective leads to some awkward moments, in which the movie over-generalizes matters. At times, the movie almost seems as if it's suggesting some unfortunate thoughts about a relationship between race and crime. Thankfully, such social considerations are not really the focus of the movie's purpose, although the filmmakers certainly want the benefit of raising such issues—as indelicately and thoughtlessly as they may be raised.

No, the real purpose here is the plot, which begins properly when Alicia takes a night shift, so that Kevin can spend time at home. Her partner on this shift is Deacon Brown (James Moses Black), who is also black and gives Alicia a lecture about needing to a choose side—"us," the cops, or "them," the inherently prejudiced outlook that doesn't speak overtly in this story.

Anyway, Deacon brings Alicia to an abandoned power plant, where she hears gunshots and, upon entering the building, witnesses Terry Malone (Frank Grillo) murder a drug dealer. The killing is captured on Alicia's body camera, and Malone's partner Smitty (Beau Knapp) shoots her. She survives and, in order to upload the camera footage at the station, has to evade a precinct of possibly criminal cops, as well as Darius (Mike Colter), a big-time drug dealer working with Malone—who tells Darius that Alicia killed his nephew.

At its best, Dowling and director Deon Taylor's movie plays as a Kafkaesque nightmare of a thriller, in which everything—from the location, to the system, to time—and everyone—from her comrades, to complete strangers, to her old friends—seem to be against Alicia. There are only a couple of people whom she can trust, and even then, it's questionable if Milo is willing to potentially risk his life for her or if Kevin is as decent as he first appears.

Taylor offers up some unexceptional chases and cat-and-mouse games (Alicia is almost supernaturally fast and nimble, even when wounded, so the sequences simply end whenever she dashes away or darts to a hiding spot). The atmosphere, though, is what matters here, and there's a genuine sense of paranoia, as well as a feeling that the world is enclosing around the protagonist (The early tension at the shop establishes the distinct likelihood that people who know Alicia will betray her), that drives the narrative.

Harris' performance may seem like a purely physical exercise, as she sprints and weaves through assorted locales. She also grounds the action with physical exhaustion, mental exertion, and, as someone who doesn't believe that people are simply either good or bad, moral exasperation.

The movie's extended climax, a long chase and shootout through a decrepit apartment complex (as well as a final, desperate move to get the camera back to the station), mostly undermines the built-up atmosphere. The final act of Black and Blue also proves that the movie's social concerns are just for show, while making it clear that Dowling would rather stick to convention than explore the potential of this premise.

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