Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Two Distant Strangers



The Oscar-winning short feature Two Distant Strangers, directed by Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe, uses a familiar trapped-in-a-time-loop device to add another layer of reflective protest to the burgeoning body of BLM messaging art.
Joey Bada$$ and Andrew Howard star as the perpetual victim of police violence and the cop who pulls the trigger, respectively. Free -- a writer of topical content for The Daily Show, Wilmore and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee -- does not plow new ground with the movie's social justice polemics and the Groundhog Day device might strike some as an odd choice for such an urgent crisis, but the picture is handsome and contains some nice visual embellishments.
A bird's-eye view shot of a police car moving through an empty city street reveals the names of George Floyd and others who were killed by police chalked on the roof of a building, and a similar overhead shot of Carter's dead body reveals the blood pooling in the shape of the African continent.
Still, both Bada$$ and Howard deliver convincing performances in a picture that some might find too fanciful to be impactful.

No comments:

Danai Gurira

  I don't know all of Danai Gurira's story but what I do know is every bit what America is about when it's functioning properly....