Black and Blue (2019)

Plot of Black and Blue: Alicia West is a rookie cop in New Orleans, out on what may be almost her first outing as an assistant to an experienced policeman. They drive into a derelict industrial area and the policeman in charge tells her to wait in the car while he disappears into a building. She hears shots but on approaching a group in the building sees that they are detectives, and as she watched one of them shoots a young black man, the event caught on her body cam. Seeing her approaching one of the policemen shoots at her and wounds her, but she manages to escape on foot, pursued by the renegade policemen. She realises that if they catch her, she will be killed for the evidence on her body cam, and that her only chance of survival is somehow to get back to the police station and submit the film of the murder. She has things in her favour. She is a former soldier who had done two tours in Afghanistan and the area in which she is being hunted is where she grew up. She also manages to enlist the help of an old friend, now a convenience store clerk.

Content: No sex or nudity or drinking or smoking or drug taking, although the whole theme of the film is trading in drugs on the part of the doubtful detective squad. Once Alicia is on the run, having glued up a would on her body she is mostly creeping about in the suburbs of New Orleans, while the police drive about in the patrol cars looking for her. The police manage to put the story about that she was the killer of the young drug traders, so the local gang are also chasing her, and her friend Mouse, who is helping her. Eventually they are caught by the gang and also the police search escalates as a SWAT team is engaged to deal with the situation.

A View: You could not call this a complex or innovative plot, but what the hell, it works pretty well and to make it all worthwhile a number of quite well known actors participated. Even so, maybe because it was all filmed on location it was a pretty low budget outing, and as a result probably made a bit of money. The move to direct streaming of films has resulted in a sort of churn of productions, most of them absolutely awful for one reason or another, so I found this outing refreshingly enjoyable. Well worth a view if you like cops and robbers.

Fun Fact: I thought it was ironic that Naomie Harris is actually British, and has been the recipient of an OBE.