Queen & Slim is a 4 word pitch: Black Bonnie & Clyde. I think everyone hears that and should at least perk up a bit. With a built in great premise like that, Lena Waithe just has to make sure the plot makes sense, and let two great leads dominate the screen. Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith are both great leads, and for the most part, the plot moves in fun exciting ways that justify the hype.
Queen & Slim’s relationship starts like all great relationships do: on Tinder. Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) messages Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) one night, and they go out for dinner in an unassuming Ohio restaurant. The date is pretty so-so, and Slim reluctantly drives Queen home, unhappy they didn’t make a connection. After mildly swerving to retrieve his phone, Slim is pulled over by one of the worst cops on the planet. Trigger happy and scared, the cop is threatened by Slim’s trunk shoe collection and Queen’s understanding of the law, so he threatens to arrest them, and shoots Queen in the leg. Slim, desperate to survive and save Queen, gets the cop’s gun and kills him in self-defense. Knowing they will probably be locked up forever or executed for killing a cop, the pair go on the run, and inadvertently inspiring a nationwide protest for their freedom.
The best part of Queen & Slim is the early parts when they go on the run, having no understanding of how ill prepared they are. Waithe introduces lots of funny fish out of water moments, usually revolving around the relatively unsavory characters the couple meets on their search for freedom. Bokeem Woodbine almost steals the movie the minute he pops up as Queen’s uncle, with some hysterical line deliveries and a living situation that’s fascinatingly crazy. In addition to the fish out of water stuff, Waithe revolves the movie around Queen and Slim getting to know each other after they’re forced to be together. Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith have a lot of fun incredulously feeling each other out, letting the pressure of their situation force them into more direct honest confrontation. Smith in particular has an incredible shocked look every time Kaluuya calls out her very specific idiosyncrasies. For a movie about murder and being on the run, Queen & Slim keeps it sorta light for a while.
But then the machinations for police evasion should become the dominant part of the story, as they can create great moments of tension. Waithe elects to revolve the movie around Queen & Slim’s relationship with each other and center the movie on how each new situation evolves their feelings toward one another. As such, everything else takes a back seat, plot especially. Sometimes this is to the movie’s detriment, as their escapes can be a tad ludicrous and we don’t get an accurate sense of how the couple feels about the movement they started. However, as a romantic character piece, Queen & Slim succeeds because of the chemistry between Kaluuya and Turner-Smith, who are both acting the hell out of the movie and oozing sexuality toward one another. Like Bonnie & Clyde, you feel like they both ended up where they were supposed to be, and found the person they were supposed to be with unexpectedly.
Even though it’s inconsistent, Queen & Slim is still a great ride, letting Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith take us on the wildest of rides across America. The actors and Lena Waithe’s script help us believe the pair would fall in love, sometimes despite the circumstances. The most ridiculous? Trying to figure out where Flea and Chloe Sevigny met and how they got married. What a wild casting choice that was.