Review of Black and Blue (2019) by Markhreviews — 03 Nov 2019

“Black and Blue” is a police procedural that offers a few pleasures along the way. The plot, however, is a plodding process of pedantic predictability. It’s not just that you can predict the storyline from a mile away - if you were circling the globe in a space capsule, the plot would still be painfully self-evident.

Alicia West (Naomie Harris) is a vet who has served two tours in Afghanistan and decided to return home to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, become a cop and continue her service to country. Most of her colleagues and adversaries are simply cardboard cut-outs. Apparently, all white cops are bad: uninterested in the plight of blacks in poorer areas of the city, obnoxiously aggressive jerks at best, murderers at worst. With only minor exceptions, blacks are gang members living the code of the streets.

What makes this film worthwhile is Naomie Harris. You may have seen her in 2016’s “Moonlight.” Some will recognize her as the first black Miss Moneypenny in “Skyfall” and “Spectre,” the two most recent installments in the James Bond franchise. Her performance here is a study in controlled intensity. Her self-control it admirable; it’s probably all she can do to keep from shooting the director and the screenwriter. In an outtake shown when the closing credits begin to roll, she displays a smile so luminous that you could see it from that space capsule. It’s the only time you see her smile in the film, presumably because she read the script beforehand.

Mike Colter makes his obligatory turn as the drug kingpin, Darius, a bit less two-dimensional than it might have been. His role here as an intimidating thug offers an interesting departure from his much more appealing roles in “Luke Cage” and this year’s TV show “Evil.” As Mouse, Tyrese Gibson (best known as a pillar of the “Fast and Furious” franchise) takes full advantage of being the only other character in the film with any depth or nuance.

If you’re an action-adventure junkie, “Black and Blue” won’t disappoint. There’s plenty of action, lots of fights and an abundance of chase scenes. Unfortunately, a lot of those chases end up at dead ends.