Queen and Slim first meet on a stiff Tinderdejt in Ohio where it seems obvious that they have no chemistry. Queen works as a lawyer and is distraught over a client who will soon receive the death penalty. One of, it turns out, many references to the US racist prison industry and justice system. Unfortunately, they are often nothing more than references that write the audience on the nose without adding much to the action. The evocative tone seems to be aimed primarily at a self-indulgent white liberal audience who appreciate having their privileges checked.
Slim is a good Christian guy who seems a little too kind. He ignores that his order has gone wrong and lets Queen boss him even though they just met. How should scriptwriters Lena Waithe and James Frey succeed in merging two such incompatible people into some form of romance?
Fortunately, in our day, there is always a universal solution: trauma vapor.
Slim is about to let go of Queen when they are stopped by an aggressive police officer.
The scene refers to known similar cases, and like the incident to Sandra Bland's death following a traffic stop, the police become violent and begin to wave their gun for no reason. Slim happens to shoot the police to death in self-defense, but being a "cop killer" is never a good look for a black man in the United States, so Queen and Slim are soon in the room together.
A gallery of one-dimensional cast members flutter by during the journey. The magical pimp uncle, the kind-hearted but skinny white allied homeowners, the sympathetic black police who let the couple run.
"Queen and Slim are idiots who deserve to get stuck," I read in my annoyed notes. Roadmovie makes very scripted jiu-jitsu to keep the odynamic duo from ever escaping the police. Although they challenge fate with their carelessness, it always seems to resolve.
"I want someone who can show me scars that I didn't know I had," says Queen when she tells what she's looking for in a man. Is it love? Finding someone who wants to hear everything about one's trauma? Slim just says he wants a ride or die, someone who stays with him despite not accomplishing anything. He doesn't seem to have more personality than that, and the actors often look lost.
Queen & Slim never succeeds in its ambition to combine romance with identity politics. Racist tragedies have been pulled directly from news headlines but portrayed clumsily and not subtly.
The biggest problem, however, is that the sparks between the Queen and Slim couple appear artificial as the characters are so underdeveloped.
On the plus side, Queen and Slim has many beautiful images along with American nature to an impressively curated soundtrack. In a few nice moments, the film appears as a "woke" - more intersectionally conscious - Natural Born Killers. But in this case, the rage against society has been reduced to a less sophisticated whine.