As puzzling as it is provocative, Black Cop follows its unnamed title character from ambivalent member of his own community (he sneers at Black Lives Matter protesters in an early scene) to angel of inarticulate vengeance, using his uniform to go Maniac Cop on privileged white folk. (Rather pleasingly, on a visceral level.) Charismatic Ronnie Rowe Jr. has to do a lot of the heavy lifting here, suggesting a conflicted inner life that’s deeper and more troubled than anything offered in the script, least of all the event that pushes him over the edge. But the film’s Medium Cool attempt at a high-voltage contemporaneity definitely excites (from doc-style scenes of protest to action viewed through dash- and chest-cams), even if I’m not entirely sure that writer-director Cory Bowles (a.k.a. Cory fromTrailer Park Boys) has its politics straight.
Georgia Straight, September 2017