There is not a white person in the world, who could ever talk to any black person and say that they understand what it is like to be black in a dangerous neighborhood and be pulled over by a police officer. To say that you “understand” to a black person about this issue, disrespects how bad this problem has been in this country for many years. Anyone who hears the intimidating police sirens following behind is already put on edge. When you’re black this experience is exponentially worse; proportional to part of the country and the training and humanity of the random police officer who stops you.

The new movie “Queen & Slim” is an idea for a film that was inevitable, when a young black couple, Queen and Slim played by Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya are pulled over by a dangerous and bigoted police officer and then turn his own gun against him after an altercation. For the rest of this movie they are on the run for their lives, driving from Ohio all the way to Miami Florida, hoping to escape to Cuba. One flaw with this movie are that there is too much driving across the country in what appears to be filler to make the movie 2 hours long. The other flaw is that there is a video of the altercation with the police officer that goes viral, and this video clearly shows that the entire incident was in self defense. Given that the altercation was clearly self defense, much of what follows is not strong enough to carry the message of this story. There is also a scene in a convenience store, where Slim gives his gun to an insane store clerk, just because he wanted to see what it felt like to hold the gun. Obviously, nobody would ever be stupid enough to do something like this and because of this, Slim is almost killed with the gun he took from the police officer.

I did not like the ending of this movie at all, and despite the critics giving this movie a very high 85% rating, mine is only 70% because too much of this story involves some long boring scenes of driving through the Southern United States and not enough story telling. I give Queen and Slim a very mild recommendation, mainly because of the message and not for the film.

As far as this ongoing horrendous police shooting issue in this country, both sides of this story are best explained in the scene below from the movie “The Hate U Give” by the actor Common, who plays a black police officer in this excellent film, released last year.