Black Cop

Cory Bowles's Black Cop is anchored by a fine performance by Ronnie Rowe Jr, as the title character, a cop tipped over the edge by the intrusiveness and shame of his being racially profiled by other cops , whilst off duty. Unfortunately instead of giving us a clean narrative to play out the story, Bowles frequently effectively stops the storytelling, to give us a look inside Black Cop's mind at various junctures, as he breaks the fourth wall and zones off on various rants. It's a really clumsy device which adversely affects what little there is of the story and mightily impacts on the pacing of the film.

We are also burdened with repetition in Black Cop. It is literally filled to the seams with close-ups. Whenever there are conversations, people's faces fill the screen. We are delivered many, many repeats of the same close-ups, the same angles of Black Cop's face on his never-ending car patrols, where he notably always is lacking a partner. I believe his character does state at some point, that it is his choice to do so. Ironically in the few action scenes we get, they are either shot from quite some distance away, or rendered pretty much ineffective by overuse of hand-held cameras.

I really would have liked to have ben invited to share more of Black Cop's story. But that seemed to be almost subordinate in a technically deficient film, where the director/writer couldn't even be bothered in naming any characters, as they played second fiddle to the primary instrument of the main character just ranting to the screen. Sadly, an awkward, poorly made film, where the lead's fine acting is just wasted.