Directing: A
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A

Here is where the line between film and television is blurred, perhaps in a way it never has before—and also in a way that might just have been inevitable. This has been the direction things have been headed for a while; a global pandemic just hastened certain elements. The hastening might be why its presentation is somewhat confusingly inconsistent: IMDb.com lists Small Axe as a “miniseries,” each installment listed like television episodes. Except that, although one of them clocks in at a mere 68 minutes, most are feature length, and the Amazon Original digital posters for it refer to Small Axe collectively as “A collection of five films.” Indeed, the first three films had their debuts just last month at the New York Film Festival.

So there’s a lot of context to consider with today’s release of the first installment, Mangrove, which happens to be a triumph of filmmaking—a movie with a lot in common with last month’s Netflix release of Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, an Oscar-eligible film that certainly has its merits but doesn’t quite stack up to this one. But, I guess, all Mangrove can hope for is Emmys? I mean, setting aside the ridiculous artifice of respective weight and importance between these different awards, still: whatever Mangrove qualifies for, it deserves to win a lot of them.

Mangrove makes incredibly judicious use of its 124 minutes, telling the true story of West Indian immigrants living in the 1960s version of Notting Hill, when it was a neighborhood far removed from what is seen in that other film from the nineties starring Hugh Grant. Much like The Trial of the Chicago 7, which is set within just a few years of the events depicted here, Mangrove is also a courtroom drama—although that is confined to the second half.

This film is very clearly set in two parts, the first half focusing on the Mangrove restaurant from which the title is taken, its West Indian immigrant owners and patrons, and the deeply racist local police force constantly raiding the establishment with no provocation. It gets so bad that the Black community demonstrates, and when they react angrily to yet more arrests without just cause, nine of them are charged with “rioting and affray.”

And thus, because of them getting charged multiple times over the course of several years, it is roughly halfway through the film that Mangrove jumps forward half a decade. There is where the editing in this movie most impresses, as confining the story of something happening over the course of years into a mere two hours is a challenge. Director and co-writer Steve McQueen, who is himself British and set out to tell stories of the Black experience in the UK with this collection, threads it all together with a steady hand. Not a moment is wasted; not once is there a lull.

In fact, much of Mangrove is a bit chaotic. These people are angry, as they have every right to be, and they express their anger forcefully and often. Nearly all the principal characters speak with a strong West Indian accent (close to what Americans would most readily recognize as Jamaican), and keeping the closed captions on—something I always do when watching anything at home anyway—is likely to be helpful.

It’s certainly a fascinating exercise to get a bit of a history lesson on these issues from elsewhere in the world, see how similar they can be to American racial injustice, and how all of these legacies inform what still goes on today. This is, of course, a direct reference to police departments in and their institutionalize racism in particular.

Mangrove is very much an ensemble in terms of its cast, and the performances are excellent without exception. It is made up of relatively unknown actors, the most recognizable of them Leticia Wright, who had played younger sister Shuri in Black Panther (2018). If anyone qualifies as a lead and also deserves specific mention, it’s Shaun Parkes as Mangrove restaurant owner Frank Crichlow, who anchors the story and provides both an anchor and a tipping point for the aforementioned anger. But, these were only two of “The Mangrove Nine,” and that’s not to mention the judge (Alex Jennings) or their lawyer (Jack Lowden) or any number of the other many characters.

What truly elevates Mangrove is its script, which remarkably manages to avoid the kind of emotional manipulation typically expected of films telling stories of this sort. McQueen presents this story entirely without sentiment, letting the facts of the events as they happened speak for themselves. He does give multiple characters pretty powerful monologues that are affecting, but in a way that feels based in reality, and in authentic struggles. This is the kind of movie that illustrates what a long road it’s been and how far we still have to go, and as such commands attention.

*Standing up for themselves and leading by example.*

Overall: A-