Born in North London to Jamaican parents, Leroy Logan joined the Metropolitan Police in 1983 when Black officers were few and far between. Determined to enact institutional change from within, he instead encountered racist reaction. In Steve McQueen’s retelling of Logan’s early time on the force, John Boyega—fresh off his sabering in a very different kind of force in 2017 and 2019’s Star Wars—energizes this real-life tale with the emotional intensity of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests (at which the actor spoke). Like other parts of the Small Axe series, Red, White and Blue communicates through dialogue—co-written by McQueen and Courttia Newland—as much as through intricacies of film style: set and sound design, costumes, soundtrack and 35mm camerawork. Physical spaces, stirring songs (courtesy of Gloria Jones, Imagination, Al Green, Marvin Gaye and Melle Mel, among others), as well as the textures of vernacular fashion speak loudly in this scathing yet understated biopic, as does the appearance of West Indian domestic life in all its quotidian bliss. One remarkable moment sees the Logan family playing Scrabble; it is also no accident that all the film’s most consequential conversations—including a thoroughly ambivalent finale—take place at the kitchen table.