Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and considerable violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.25.19
As a gritty urban thriller, this is one helluva ride.
Director Deon Taylor and production designer Frank Zito make superlative use of post-Katrina New Orleans’ still ravaged wards; such scenes evoke the bombed-out European cities during all manner of World War II-era film dramas. One can’t help viewing this setting as a deplorable condemnation of the U.S. government’s failure to put any effort into rejuvenating NOLA’s poorer neighborhoods.
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| With corrupt cops closing in from all sides, Officer Alicia West (Naomie Harris) and Mouse (Tyrese Gibson) have little chance of surviving the next few seconds, let alone long enough to get crucial information back to her precinct house. |
Taylor also draws a persuasive, crowd-pleasing performance from Naomie Harris, starring as rookie police officer Alicia West: an intelligent, compassionate and admirably (foolishly?) stubborn individual who genuinely believes that change begins one person at a time. She gets solid support from Tyrese Gibson, similarly strong as Milo “Mouse” Jackson, a local fixture whose tenuous, long-dormant tie to Alicia puts him in mortal danger.
And if this film had nothing beyond its suspenseful, heroine-in-peril scenario, this would be an entirely different essay.
But no: Peter A. Dowling’s original script is equal parts (supposedly) barbed social commentary, and in that, this film fails utterly. Indeed, this story is an equally offensive example of that which it intends to indict.
We begin as Alicia, enjoying an early morning jog through her attractive suburban neighborhood, is stopped and thrown against a fence by two white cracker cops intending to bust her for EWB (existing while black). They back off — very reluctantly — only when her ID reveals that she’s “on the job.”
Her day having gotten off to a lousy start, she nonetheless works a full shift alongside mentoring partner Kevin Jennings (Reid Scott), a decent enough guy who laments that their beat — the Ninth Ward — has deteriorated significantly, since she left years earlier and served several army tours in Afghanistan. Chance encounters with Mouse and former best friend Missy (Nafessa Williams) elicit savage contempt from the latter, now that Alicia has become “blue,” rather than black.
A personnel shortage prompts a second night shift detail, with Alicia now working alongside veteran Officer Deacon Brown (James Moses Black). As dawn approaches, they roll up to an abandoned warehouse, Brown having gotten “an assignment” on his personal cell phone. He orders her to remain in the car; when shots are fired, she rushes into the building, intending to support Brown.
And is just in time to witness Brown standing idly by, while narcotics officer Terry Malone (Frank Grillo) coldly executes a third young gang-banger: an event she unwittingly captures on her body cam. The tableau remains frozen for a heartbeat, after which Malone’s dim-bulb, lap-dog partner Smitty (Brian Knapp) shoots her in the chest. Saved by her bulletproof vest, she staggers to her feet and flees.
Alicia knows that she needs to get the body cam back to the station, where the footage can be uploaded, thus exposing Malone and his partners. He, in turn, is determined to ensure — by any means necessary — that she never makes it out of the city’s most dangerous neighborhood: in thrall to the drug-running Kingston Crew, headed by gold-toothed Darius (Mike Colter, immediately recognized, in voice and appearance, as TV’s Luke Cage).
Credit where due: Grillo makes an impressive nasty villain. He’s also coldly, relentlessly unstoppable.
Knapp, in contrast, turns Smitty into a cartoon: a grotesquely overplayed joke, in whose head an original thought would die of loneliness.
Mouse gets dragged into the resulting pursuit — much against his will — which unfolds credibly on both sides: via solid deductive work by the bad guys, and wholly reasonable behavior by Alicia and Mouse. And that’s key: At no time does Harris transform her character into some sort of superhero. Indeed, the initial gun shots leave her physically compromised, and the script never forgets that. (Well, at least not until the very end.)
Along the way, the story borrows a provocative note from the ancient war proverb: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
And despite the increasingly overwhelming odds, Alicia magnanimously never sheds her belief that any social injustice — no matter how dire, no matter how entrenched — can be turned around. She insists as much on several occasions, and it’s to Harris’ credit that she pulls off such dialog, without sounding corny or preachy.
Particularly since every single white character in this story is a repugnant, one-dimensional troglodyte: gleefully racist, stupid, frequently kill-crazy, and corrupt to the core. Malone’s self-defensive “justification speech,” as this saga nears its climax, is especially loathsome.
If a white director made this film with the racial roles reversed, the resulting outrage would fuel angry media editorials for weeks. So why is it acceptable for a black director to get away with it here?
It isn’t. More to the point — the nobler aspects of Harris’ Alicia West notwithstanding — Taylor’s film does nothing to seriously address or improve our nation’s badly frayed racial and social fabric. Indeed, he merely tosses a match into a dynamite-laden shed.
This film is a rant, ergo it fails to be anything remotely approaching “instructive.” It also fails as good drama, since Alicia and Mouse’s “real” characters are opposed by ludicrously exaggerated burlesques of evil.
Harris and Gibson deserved better.
So do we.
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