"Red, White and Blue" is another fine movie among the "Small Axe" anthology from Steve McQueen about the West Indian experience in London circa 1960s-1980s. This one is based on the true story of Leroy Logan who tries to reform policing from within--making him an outcast in two communities, the black and the blue, called a "traitor" by one and worse by the other. One would be forgiven for seeing similarities in subject matter with Spike Lee's "BlacKkKlansman" (2019), which followed a thread of such reform from blaxploitation films of the 1970s, but has been there since at least the moral uplift of Oscar Micheaux's race films, such as "Within Our Gates" (1920), which featured a black detective among other African Americans in prominent societal positions.
Anyways, this movie does well to keep a balanced tone throughout despite dealing with potentially melodramatic material, including Logan becoming an officer after having been harassed by bobbies as a child and his father being assaulted by cops. A police chase is effective in a different way than the usual action-crime flick, as one may be genuinely more concerned for Logan's safety as well as for the risk that he might adopt the excessive force of fellow policemen. John Boyega in the lead and Steve Toussaint supporting as his father are excellent. There's a particularly good and brief flashback to the father looking in a bathroom mirror compared to the son sitting in a locker room. It's a good little movie, restrained and more powerful in its anti-racist community policing message because of it.
Oh, and yes, it's funny that there's a "Star Wars" pun here about the "force" when star Boyega is best known for starring in the latest trilogy of that franchise. Plus, that character was of two sides, too, stormtrooper law enforcement and resistance fighter.
