Major Crimes
There’s an inherent ambivalence in him that is registered in paradoxes – handsome like a traditional movie star, but retains a nervous energy that makes him seem immediately shifty or compromised. He carries his height like a weapon, rather than with ease. And, he distils that same ambiguity to such good effect here, shouldering the film and making Koslow opaque enough to retain mystery, but sympathetic in spite of his moral greyness.
It’s the same kind of shouldering that Naomie Harris is doing in “Black and Blue”. Like Kinnaman she’s assisted by an able cast, but her corrupt-cop drama is dependent on her ability to shoulder a great level of emotional rectitude. “Black and Blue” is less assured in its development, and less sharp about its thrills, but it’s also working towards something different with a specific focus on contemporary cultural conversation about race and police corruption in America. Harris’ Alicia is a returning veteran who newly joins the police force in her hometown, but the residents are appropriately mistrustful of the police who ignore or exploit the community, and the police’s inherent racism means Alicia is similarly at odds with that community, so she’s isolated in the middle. This initial isolation deepens when she witnesses some of her colleagues murdering some community members, and the film begins in earnest as Alicia must race against time to get her bodycam footage uploaded to the police server while avoiding what seems like the entire police force – the majority of whom seem compromised – and the members of the community who believe she is the perpetrator.
Whereas “The Informer” benefits from an ambivalent unpredictably all the way to its ambiguous ending, “Black and Blue” is more discernibly interested in telegraphing its intentions. Alicia’s only ally is a childhood friend (an outstanding Tyrese Gibson) as she struggles to make sense of the corruption and do the right thing, if only because her altruistic persona demands it. Director Deon Taylor knows how to shoot a chase scene and the film’s cat-and-mouse race between Alicia and her assailants are the best sequences, where Harris earns our empathy while playing both action hero and emotional centre. The performance deepens the context of the film, turning it into something immediately more vibrant than you would expect.
What’s great about both films is the way that they utilise the pop culture friendly crime genre to illuminate, rather than obscure, things about the world we live in. “Black and Blue” comes out more hopeful than “The Informer” but they’re interrogating questions like what it means to be a hero, who should be accountable and the difficulty of trying to resist evil when it’s baked into the fabric of our very existence. Within this dynamic, “The Informer” and its ambivalence seems more apt for 2019 but both films are worthy entries for the year, offering complementary accounts of the state of corruption that reflect our own world.
“Black and Blue” is currently playing at Caribbean Cinemas and MovieTowne Guyana.