“Why do black people always feel the need to be excellent?” sighs the male half of the “black Bonnie and Clyde” of Queen & Slim. “Why can’t we just be ourselves?” A century and a half ago, black Americans were finally guaranteed the right, at least on paper, to consider their bodies their own, but many today would be justified in feeling only a tenuous control over their lives, especially when a police officer can end them with impunity. After a traffic stop leads to the killing of a white cop in self-defense, the central couple in Queen & Slim are forced to abruptly surrender the lives that they’d carefully built for themselves: he (Daniel Kaluuya) as a dutiful son who’s square and self-assured enough to pray before his meal on a first date and she (Jodie Turner-Smith) as a criminal defense lawyer prone to building walls around herself but desperate to let someone in. As soon as they’re pulled over by a racist cop who should’ve been taken off the streets years ago, their fates are sealed. Within hours, their tragedy becomes everyone else’s story.