BLACK COP DISC D: Cory Bowles. Sep 12, 9:30 pm, Scotiabank 3 Sep 14, 7 pm, Scotiabank 11 Sep 17, 11:45 am, Scotiabank 9. Rating: NNNN
A nervy, queasy combination of jet-black satire and stylized psychodrama, Black Cop – expanded by writer/director Bowles from his short film – lands smack in the middle of the Black Lives Matter debate. The timing couldn’t be more opportune – and better still, the movie genuinely engages with the issue of racial profiling and police violence.
Ronnie Rowe Jr. is terrific as the unnamed protagonist, a beat cop in an East Coast city who impulsively spends a day treating white civilians the way white cops treat Black people – with unnecessary hostility, physical threats and even violence. The question of whether he’s doing it as a political statement or because he’s having a psychotic break quickly becomes less important than whether he’s going to kill someone. Rowe’s mercurial performance brings an edge to the character’s most innocuous interactions anything can happen at any time.
Bowles shoots the action from multiple angles, incorporating footage from Black Cop’s body camera and anonymous cameraphones and scoring the film with furious hip-hop and angry talk-radio callers to create a sense of the conversation unfolding in the background. But his most daring creative decision is to risk dividing audiences by arguing that there’s really only one side to this issue.
