Queen And Slim, The Worst Black Film Ever Made

So last night I had a movie date night with my husband. It had been a while since I had sat down with the King and watched a movie, I am always busy nursing the baby and looking after the children, and he is always busy running around managing his properties. The other time I was telling him that I miss him so much, because we hardly spend time together, just the two of us, even though we live together. So last night’s movie date was a big deal to both us. And I had the honour of picking the movie, so I chose Queen and Slim as it’s been on my to watch list for over a year.

I don’t watch slave movies at all. I refuse to watch anything to do with slavery. I do not even understand how black people can boldly and comfortably play slave roles in the name of art or storytelling. What is the point of visually telling a story of torture and rape? If your daughter was raped, would you want another girl child and man imitating her ordeal for the world’s entertainment? Why should you have to visually remind people that rape happens? That is what black people playing slaves in the entertainment industry looks like. Its sick and an insult to the ancestors, and nothing justifies it. Some stories do not need to be visually told in arts as there is no point in telling them.

This brings me to the movie I watched last night with my husband. I failed to understand the point of the movie. If you are going to put a reality into an art, there has to be a point in it. Yes we know black people get killed by white cops everyday like flies in the USA. We know in the world black people are forced into situations that even brands them as criminals, when they are just trying to survive. We all already know this reality, even my 6 year old daughter understand this very well. We all read the papers, we all watch news. We all bleed because of the injustice and evil. Its there in black and white, no need to visually remind us in the name of art.

When we sat down to watch Queen and Slim, within the first minutes of this movie, this cute law abiding black couple was stopped by a white cop after their first date, I then sensed that this was one of those disheartening black injustice suffering kinda movies. I told my husband that I didn’t want to watch it, he reassured me that it looked good, and it wasn’t going to be one of those sick pointless black movies.

To be fair, at this point, I had already fallen in love with the characters. The performances from Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner Smith were just outstanding. I fell in love with the casting, it was the first time seeing a dark skinned black woman play a romantic lead. Dark skinned black women are never given such movie roles, those roles are strictly normally reserved for mixed race women first, if not then very light skinned black women. To prove my point, even in real life Jodie is married to a white man, because black men never find such dark women attractive.

Dark skinned black women NEVER get to play a role like that, but Jodie was just so cute, so it was indeed an inspiring start to the crime romantic suspense film.

It was funny, because she looks just like my husband’s ex girlfriend Emma, when I was thinking it, then my husband said it…

“She looks a bit like…”

“Emma…I know.”

So we were so both into the movie, even in our silence we were connected and thinking the same things. I was lying on my husband’s chest, eating prawn crackers and drinking gallons of orange juice, snuggled under a soft throw. It was such a perfect night, we were ready to be inspired together, and taken on an epic visual journey of adventure and hope.

So as the movie rolls, this sweet black couple ends up on the run after they had killed an evil white cop in self defence. If they had not killed him, the white cop was going to kill both of them, for no reason at all, they had not broken any law, he was going to kill them because he could. So as the couple went on the run, they fell in love, and the suspense was gripping, as they overcame obstacles running away from an evil system where they had been criminalised because of the colour of their skin.

The story builds up to some HOPE, it was not just about them being on the run, it was the love story that unfolded as they ran together. It was how they brought out the strengths in each other, it was suspense but also heart warming, and my husband and I found ourselves kissing passionately and reflecting on our own journey together.

We related to how the system even here in the UK made us homeless simply because we were black. How when I was pregnant we were living in air BnBs and somehow were forced to make it, when the system is actually designed to cripple us. We found ourselves relating to the film, even though we are not in the USA. It is in a way the same story all over the world.

The iconic line for me was when Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) said to Queen, after she had said she was an excellent lawyer.

“Why do black people feel the need to be excellent? Why can’t you just be yourself?”

The film was sobering and touching. The story of bravery and hope was building so well. At one point we posed the film and I went to get a drink for the King. And as I cuddled to him I told him how much I loved him, and how we had stuck with each other through thick and thin, the film made us go back in time.

But then as the film climaxes to an end, where Queen and Slim are supposed to fly away to safety away from the evil system, they are suddenly surrounded and shot by the cops, in a very inhumane and barbaric way, after a black man sold them out.

My husband and I were so shocked by the ending, we never saw it coming. The ending was so sudden, and horrific and we both said, “What was the point of the film then?”

I was even thinking, “Why did you even dub them the black Bonnie and Clyde in the actual film?”

What was the point of even building the story, if you are just going to end it without Hope or a solution. Whoever wrote this film is one of the worst screenwriters of all times.

I then read somewhere that the writers wanted to show the reality of black people in America. But that doesn’t make any sense because black people in America don’t even have the luxury of going on the run after being stopped by police, they are just killed end off. They have no luxury of falling in love as they run, and meeting all these people who are ready to help them, knowing that they are all over the front pages and news as most wanted. The Eric Garners and Goarge Floyds and Breona Taylors never had to luxury of fighting back the cops in self defence, so stop with the bullshit comparisons and hypocrisy, this was just a very bad script and poor storytelling. It was awful.

You cannot decide to build a story of fighting back and HOPE then choose to just kill everything you had build up at the end just to prove a point that “shit happens” in reality. Yes shit happens we all know it, but there has to be some sort of moral of the story, especially were fighting, bravery and love is depicted as the heart of the story. The black Americans who are killed by the cops in real life do not fight back neither do they go on an epic journey driven by love and hope. So using the victims of Police brutality in the US to justify such a barbaric ending is no excuse.

Gosh, I wished I had not watched the film, it was just stupid. Total waste of emotions it was. I saw it as a sick twisted joke actually, and the joke was on us, BLACK PEOPLE.

If we are not playing slaves and getting Oscars for how good we are at playing slaves, we then choose to write our own pitiful pathetic sour sob stories, where even in fighting back the system, we have to prove to each other that we always LOSE in the end, hurray, in such a pathetic way as well…

That is the moral of Queen and Slim ya’ll, and I will never recomend any sane black person to watch it, it’s the worst film ever. Demoralizing is an understatement.

The Genesis of the Revelation By

Mary-Tamar was Jean