Black and Blue

I've been a fan of Naomie Harris since she was in White Teeth, and I was interested to see this thriller with her in the lead, even if the trailer and everything I heard about it told me it would be generic at best. Unsurprisingly this is what it was - the type of thriller that you could stop after 15 minutes and pretty much guess the rest. Of course the reason why we know this type of plot is that some films have done it really well and made it a model to be leant on, but not this film. Instead it plays it out in the most obvious way, with little effort in the writing and no twists or turns to even vaguely excite - everything is heavily signposted as if they didn't trust the viewer to get anything by themselves. As it goes where you expect, it delivers enough distracting scenes to manage to get by, but everything is heavy-handed. The title is pretty obvious in its meaning, but it doesn't do anything clever with it, but it leans all over it from the very start. The actual thriller elements are also fairly basic and hard to believe and there was so much scope to be tighter and better.

The blame lies in two very obvious places - writer and director. Neither of them have much in their filmography to be excited about. The writer did Flightpath and Reasonable Doubt - high points in his career but demonstrably not great films. The most notable thing about the director that I can see on his IMDb page is that his PR people wrote his bio - or at least I can't see any other reason why it says that he "is a self-taught, creative genius" when this film suggests he is absolutely not. The main selling point of the film is what brought me to it - the cast. Harris is much, much better than the material deserves; she puts in a lot of effort to show her rage, morality, desperation, but the writing does not help her one bit and too many lines clunk out of her mouth. It hurts because there was a much better film and performance here, and the writing takes it from her. Gibson is a bit better because he has more to work with, although not much. Grillo is reliable as ever, and the rest of the cast are mostly generic cariactures befitting such a generic film.

It distracts and meets the low bar I came to it with, but it doesn't do anything more than that. The cast make it better than it is, but at the same time they are pretty much all wasted here.

Ok let's get this straight. The movie is pretty good to me. Some "American traditional" social problems are depicted strongly and its script is great also. I am not a drama person but I feel that it is a bit weird when most of bad reviews are made just because the content points out some cops are bad?! Really guys, isn't that not true? Guys, bad people are everywhere, they can be teachers, doctors and of course they can be cops. It's absolutely logical and makes sense. No matter if you are a real patriot or not, you can't deny this fact. It would be silly to rate the whole performance 1 star just because you don't accept this truth. Please don't be rude and make your reviews fairly so this website can bring its true value to everyone. To those who don't see the movie yet, there is nothing wrong with it, just spend some bucks buying tickets yourself, your sweetheart and families and enjoy the movie. I promise everything's gonna fine! Don't put your trust on haters!

Starts with a black woman in a hoodie getting stopped while jogging. Confronts white cops with attitude, gets slammed against fence. Turns out to be fully fledged cop with her shield in her pocket. Aannnd that's about as subtle and nuanced as Black and Blue gets.

Even the scene where the cops get coffee later on is ramped up for tension.

Misfire. Could be so much more with a little more finesse on the script editing.

Very interesting narrative about police and race relations; but because of how the movie was executed, it falls short. Ok writing, acting, and plot. The main character, Alicia West played by Naomi Harris, story was pretty good. At times, because of the directing, her acting wasn't believable. Also, because of the spotty development of the secondary characters, it was hard to have any empathy towards them. In contrast, great use of background aka mise-en-scene, to deliver a message to the viewers that are watching. Lastly, I do like the overall message of the film which is that we all are people (especially black people and other people of color) and all we want is to be treated as such.

Not sure why they nitpicked on this one so hard - maybe they can't stand all the bogus high single-film reviewers, but still, far too many haters as well. I for one enjoyed it. The directing was on point, the screenplay was well put together with excellent pacing for the 108 min runtime. Sure there were a few plot issues and some cliches, but it was still very suspenseful and entertaining. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Cinematography and score were decent, and the casting and all performances were excellent. It's refreshing to be satisfyingly impressed when going in with low expectations. It's a very deserving 8/10 from me. To see how I review films, or read more of my 1000+ reviews, click on my username.