Yesterday, I decided to spend some time binge-watching some movies and I stumbled upon this movie on Netflix titled Queen & Slim. My initial reaction was to skip through as I try to avoid movies with racial tension. It often has a negative effect on me and this movie wasn’t an exception. There is a lot to talk about this movie and I will go over a few in this post.
Queen & Slim is an American romantic feature starring Jodie Turner-Smith who played Queen and Daniel Kaluuya as Slim, who is famous for his lead role in the 2017 horror movie, Get Out. I think there are a lot of similarities between the characters in both movies. At intervals, while watching this movie I had flashbacks of Chris Washington and the feeling of him being stuck in a difficult position.
The movie was released on November 14, 2019, with a budget of about $17-$20 million and grossed 47.9 million at the box office. I do wonder why a simple romantic movie would cost this much. I need to find out what goes into these movies to justify the cost.
The plot of the story is quite simple: Queen, a black criminal defence attorney decided to go on a date with a man, Slim, whom she met on Tinder (bad idea), to get her mind off a case she had recently lost. However, the date did not turn out as planned. Out of courtesy, Slim decided to take his date home when they were stopped by a white cop. Things quickly escalated. Queen was shot in the leg by the cop and in her defence, Slim shot the cop who died on the spot.
In the heat of the moment, both Queen and Slim decided to flee the crime screen and eventually the country. They will travel across America discovering bits about themselves and eventually falling in love as they try to evade the police.
I particularly like this story because it is a tragedy. As a writer, I have written a couple of tragedies as it goes against the major rule of satisfying the audience at the end and leaves room for further conversations. Queen & Slim is a movie that would leave you sadder than you initially were after watching. The movie covers a lot of real-life issues: racism, police brutality, love, and betrayal.
However, there were beautiful scenes in the movie that had tears rolling down my cheeks. One of my favourite scenes starts with Queen asking a question, “what do you want?” And the conversation went like this:
Slim: I want to ride or die
Queen: Oh my God. What does that even mean?
Slim: I just want someone that’s always going to love me. No matter what. Someone that’s going to hold my hand and never let it go. But she got to be special though.
Queen: What do you mean?
Slim: Because she is going to be my legacy.
There is something about this scene and response that resonates with me and I had to watch this a couple of times (until my partner got sick of hearing those words). It comes from a real place and encapsulates something I do feel.
As I said earlier, the plot of the movie is simple but with some depth as it covers some key social issues like racism and police brutality. It is a harsh reality knowing black people are stereotyped (consciousness and unconsciously). The whole incident in the society would go differently if these characters were of a certain race. I am not going to fuel the race war, but it is something that exists and every black person understands this to some degree, even though we act indifferent.
So in a nutshell, Queen & Slim is a great movie. Although, there are some scenes I felt were too convenient and I could predict that ending given how convenient their escape was from the beginning. Nevertheless, the movie is worth your time.
