A Bonnie & Clyde, of sorts
Daniel Kaluuya and blazing newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith bring the sparks to “Queen & Slim.”
The title characters of outlaw romance “Queen & Slim” could hardly be less suited for each other than they are at the start of the movie.
A Tinder date in a Cleveland diner finds the couple we’ll get to know as Queen (blazing newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (Daniel Kaluuya, “Get Out”) struggling to find anything in common.
She’s a probing defence attorney wrapped in a tight turtleneck and tighter smile.
He’s a prayerful retail toiler with an open collar and quizzical grin. When Slim asks Queen why she finally said “yes” to a date, she answers, “I felt sorry for you.”
A violent encounter with a racist cop (Sturgill Simpson) minutes later will draw Queen and Slim together in ways they never imagined, although viewers will, as they hit the road just ahead of pursuing cops.
“I’m not a criminal,” Slim insists. “You are now,” Queen says. So commences the cracking feature debut of video director Melina Matsoukas (Beyoncé’s “Formation”), who announces herself as a filmmaker to watch.
Her music background contributed to assembling the soulfully expressive soundtrack, which includes the likes of Megan Thee Stallion, Solange, Lauryn Hill and Dev Hynes, a.k.a. Blood Orange, who also composed the score. The screenplay by Lena Waithe, from a story by James Frey and Waithe, nominally unfolds as a Black Bonnie and Clyde story — a comparison made even in the trailer.
As they head south, with important stops in New Orleans and Florida, our anti-heroes shed their uptight images and attitudes, just as the movie eases up on genre comparisons. The on-the-lam duo become folk heroes of a sort, just like Bonnie and Clyde, but they’re not looking for notoriety the way that infamous screen (and also real life) couple did. “Queen & Slim” has more than a few dialogue clangers and narrative contrivances — how could a guy forget his wallet twice in the space of 10 minutes? — but the felicitous pairing of Turner-Smith and Kaluuya makes the flaws easy to forgive.
Their characters help illustrate the gender and racial divides of modern life, but not from a didactic point of view. There are Black and white people both good and bad in this saga, just as there are in the real world.
And mostly people are somewhere in between, such as Queen’s Uncle Earl (Bokeem Woodbine), who could fit the description of Iraq war vet and also pimp.
You’re never quite sure what you’re going to get with him, just as with “Queen & Slim,” in a good way.