Black Cop

"Black Cop" is just one of many names slapped on the lead character in director Cory Bowles' film. He also gets called a sellout, a rogue police officer, a dirty cop, a bogeyman, and an avenger. Sick and tired of witnessing — and living — the systematic abuse of black people, Black Cop (Ronnie Rowe Jr., in an enthralling performance) rejects peaceful advocacy, instead inflicting on the white oppressor what the oppressor has inflicted on his people: the violent abuse of power. By consciously and calculatingly taking control of the terror rather than submitting to it, Black Cop reveals its protagonist as a conundrum.

Bowles pursues his film's simple but staggering reversal to its logical conclusion. By visualizing a stark shift in power, Black Cop asks why some Canadians continue to be treated with suspicion, fear, and violence by authorities who have sworn to serve and protect. It pointedly asks us to assess how problematic it can be to expect the ostracized to become defenders of the system that created the imbalance. Movements, anger, and solutions have many faces: peaceful and, at times, vengeful.

Black Cop is a thoughtful and energizing satire, a powerful confrontation to the status quo, and an embodiment of film as the ultimate agent of conversation.

MAGALI SIMARD