'Red, White And Blue' Trailer: John Boyega Confronts Police Brutality In Steve McQueen's 'Small Axe' Film

There are few directors that have properly utilized John Boyega to his full, star-powered potential, and Steve McQueen is one of those directors. In the latest of McQueen's Small Axe films (a collection of interrelated films), Boyega gives one of the best performances of his career as a Black police officer who faces the daunting task of trying to affect change from within a corrupt, racist system. Watch the Red, White and Blue trailer below.

In a drama inspired by real life events, Red, White and Blue stars Boyega as Leroy Logan, a forensic scientist who takes up a calling to become a police officer after witnessing his father get assaulted by two policemen. This puts Leroy squarely in the crossfire between the corrupt, structurally racist police system and the suspicious West Indian London community that has been terrorized by police for years.

In my review for Red, White and Blue at the virtual New York Film Festival, I called the drama the "most challenging" of McQueen's Small Axe films, "a difficult, oftentimes bleak, reflection of the Sisyphean fight for racial equality with Boyega at the center as that mythic figure fruitlessly rolling the boulder up the mountain." The film can often almost punishing in its refusal to give viewers easy answers, but it's one that feels so extremely urgent for its unfortunate timeliness — not only of Boyega's real-life activism on the unfair treatment of Black actors in Hollywood, but for the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement and its issues with police brutality, which the actor has been outspoken on as well.

Here is the synopsis for Red, White and Blue:

Red, White and Blue tells the true story of Leroy Logan, a young forensic scientist with a yearning to do more than his solitary laboratory work. When he sees his father assaulted by two policemen, he finds himself driven to revisiting a childhood ambition to become a police officer; an ambition borne from the naïve hope of wanting to change racist attitudes from within. First, Leroy has to face the consequences of his father's disapproval, never mind the blatant racism he finds in his new role as a despised yet exemplary Constable in the Metropolitan Police Force. John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and Steve Toussaint (Prince of Persia) star with talented newcomers Tyrone Huntley, Nathan Vidal and Jaden Oshenye. Red, White and Blue was co-written by Courttia Newland and Steve M^cQueen.

Red, White and Blue premieres on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, December 4, 2020.