White Ed says John Boyega would make a good cop, and after the cops fuck up his dad (Steve Toussaint of the latest Game of Thrones thing) real bad for telling them they’re wrong, John joins the force to combat racial misunderstanding. His friends respond appropriately: “I thought you were cool. What happened to you?”
Weirdly, the racist police bosses don’t see what the new hires’ diverse backgrounds can add to the police procedures, but at least they drop charges against John’s dad since they’d lose anyway and they know John is a good PR pull. And weirdly, John’s very presence doesn’t make all the racism dry up, and weirdly he does everything right but still gets passed up for promotion.
Since I watched the last one of these, Criterion has issued a handsome box set, in which Ashley Clark says this movie and Alex Wheatle “form a compelling diptych exploring the true stories of two Black men whose vastly different lives are irrevocably shaped by negative interactions with the police,” so maybe I shouldn’t wait two years before checking out the next chapter.