NYFF: Steve McQueen's "Red White and Blue"
by Jason Adams
And so we come to the third piece that the New York Film Festival is screening out of Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" series of five total films -- if you missed my thoughts on Lovers Rock you can read them here and if you missed my thoughts on Mangrove you can read those right here. NYFF flip-flopped the screening order on the previous chapters and Red White and Blue, today's focus, jumps us to all the way to the final chapter of the series, and you can sense that about it. It has the feel of a breath, a pause -- a looking back upon itself and taking tenative, pained stock.
As with Mangrove we're focusing again on a true story. This time it's the 1980s and John Boyega plays Leroy Logan, a young man who was on track to become a forensic scientist until his father was assaulted by a couple of racist cops...