As many reviews of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe have noted, the miniseries derives its somewhat unusual title from a West Indian proverb made popular in a Bob Marley song: “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.” This pithy adage evokes, with a tone of striking confidence, the central theme of McQueen’s ambitious five-part anthology of stories—namely, the struggle of London’s West Indian community against the forces of institutional racism, state repression, and police violence.
Keep chipping away at these unjust structures of dominance for long enough, McQueen’s miniseries more than suggests, and eventually they’ll fall to the ground. But it would be easy to miss a key word embedded in that proverb, one which is central not only to the thematic basis of Small Axe, but to its very construction: “we.”
Composed of five self-contained films, each telling a distinct story about the joys and,...
Keep chipping away at these unjust structures of dominance for long enough, McQueen’s miniseries more than suggests, and eventually they’ll fall to the ground. But it would be easy to miss a key word embedded in that proverb, one which is central not only to the thematic basis of Small Axe, but to its very construction: “we.”
Composed of five self-contained films, each telling a distinct story about the joys and,...
- 5/12/2023
- by Keith Watson
- Slant Magazine
This story about John Boyega and “Small Axe” first appeared in the Limited Series & TV Movies issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
Early in “Red, White, and Blue,” a young research biologist in London tells his stunned father that he plans to abandon his current career path and become a Metropolitan police officer. The film, the third in director Steve McQueen’s formidable five-movie anthology “Small Axe,” portrays the real-life experience of Leroy Logan, who joined the London force in 1983, facing racism and intolerance as a Black man in a nearly all-white institution.
It was that moment between father and son that actor John Boyega brings up first when asked what moments in the script spiritually connected him to the role. “I vividly remember having a similar conversation with my dad when I told him I wanted to forgo university and go to L.A. for acting,” said Boyega, who...
Early in “Red, White, and Blue,” a young research biologist in London tells his stunned father that he plans to abandon his current career path and become a Metropolitan police officer. The film, the third in director Steve McQueen’s formidable five-movie anthology “Small Axe,” portrays the real-life experience of Leroy Logan, who joined the London force in 1983, facing racism and intolerance as a Black man in a nearly all-white institution.
It was that moment between father and son that actor John Boyega brings up first when asked what moments in the script spiritually connected him to the role. “I vividly remember having a similar conversation with my dad when I told him I wanted to forgo university and go to L.A. for acting,” said Boyega, who...
- 6/17/2021
- by Joe McGovern
- The Wrap
It is often hard enough to conjure the right mood for one installment of an anthology series, but what if your task is five times that? Music supervisor Ed Bailie was tasked by Academy Award-nominated director Steve McQueen to do just that for “Small Axe,” a quintet of period-specific films about Black life in England ranging from the 1960s to the 1980s, touching on social topics from police brutality to the failings of the education system to a raging house party’s effect on young lives. “We used about 80 or 90 songs in the course of ‘Small Axe,'” says Bailie, “and each film had different music illustrated in the scripts, so every part carved their own identities throughout”.
For “Mangrove,” the lengthiest and arguably most-charged entry that opens “Axe,” Bailie took his cue from the Trinidadian-settled Notting Hill of the late 1960s — far removed from the gentrified neighborhood seen years...
For “Mangrove,” the lengthiest and arguably most-charged entry that opens “Axe,” Bailie took his cue from the Trinidadian-settled Notting Hill of the late 1960s — far removed from the gentrified neighborhood seen years...
- 6/14/2021
- by Jason Clark
- The Wrap
Steve McQueen’s five-film opus Small Axe concludes with Friday’s release of Education, the story of a boy named Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy), whose difficulty with reading has him reassigned to a school for the “educationally subnormal” — a.k.a. students for whom the British school system has abandoned all hope. Education completes a quintet of remarkable stories set between 1968 and 1984, some rooted in fact, others inspired by the experiences of the 12 Years a Slave director’s mother and other Englanders of West Indian descent.
[All 5 Films Are Streaming on Amazon Prime Video]
The first installment,...
[All 5 Films Are Streaming on Amazon Prime Video]
The first installment,...
- 12/18/2020
- by Alan Sepinwall
- Rollingstone.com
In any year, Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” would be a historic achievement. But in 2020, amid a worldwide reckoning on racial injustice while a pandemic has wreaked havoc on the entertainment industry — blurring the lines between film and TV — this five-part series is an auspicious game-changer.
Shining a light on little-known tales of Black pride and heroism from the U.K.’s Windrush generation, each instalment is set between the late ’60s and early ’80s and features people from the Black diaspora speaking in their own dialects and revelling in their culture. For that alone, “Small Axe” is special, but the themes in each of the interlinked stories still resonate powerfully today.
With the final chapter debuting on the BBC on Sunday, the time has come to rank the series as a whole — a considerable challenge when you consider that while satisfaction may have varied over the films, there isn...
Shining a light on little-known tales of Black pride and heroism from the U.K.’s Windrush generation, each instalment is set between the late ’60s and early ’80s and features people from the Black diaspora speaking in their own dialects and revelling in their culture. For that alone, “Small Axe” is special, but the themes in each of the interlinked stories still resonate powerfully today.
With the final chapter debuting on the BBC on Sunday, the time has come to rank the series as a whole — a considerable challenge when you consider that while satisfaction may have varied over the films, there isn...
- 12/13/2020
- by Amon Warmann
- Variety Film + TV
The confused, frightened, complying face of a young black boy as two Metropolitan police stop, search, and humiliate him on the street: This is one of the first things we see in Red, White, and Blue, the third in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe pentalogy, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. It’s an image that grows even more charged in hindsight, a few scenes (spanning years) later, when the boy’s father — who’d swooped in to save him in that earlier encounter — is badly beaten by the police...
- 12/5/2020
- by K. Austin Collins
- Rollingstone.com
Red, White and Blue, the third and final installment of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe quintet of films about racial issues specific to Great Britain being world premiered at the New York Film Festival, zeroes in on the ordeal of a young black Londoner set on helping to definitively break the color barrier at London’s Metropolitan Police Force in the early 1980s. Meeting with great resistance both from the vast majority of white Bobbies and his own hard-headed father, Leroy Logan had a very hard time of it, which makes for a compelling story of admirable perseverance, even if it ends up being a rather predictable one.
All three of the entries shown thus far are engaging in their own ways and, best of all, open a window upon characters and ways of life almost entirely ignored in...
All three of the entries shown thus far are engaging in their own ways and, best of all, open a window upon characters and ways of life almost entirely ignored in...
- 10/4/2020
- by Todd McCarthy
- Deadline Film + TV
In “Red, White and Blue,” the fifth and final film of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, Leroy Logan (John Boyega), a British research scientist, figures that he’s had enough of the lonely work of staring at tissue specimens through a microscope, so he decides to become a member of the London Metropolitan Police Force. At his big meet-the-commission job interview, the conversation dances around the issue of race for about a millisecond until Logan puts it right out there, saying that he’s applying for the job “to combat negative attitudes,” and to be a force for change against “divisions” and “misunderstandings.” The crusty officer in charge looks at him and says “You’re right,” and then adds, “Attempts to interact with your people have fallen quite short.”
He’s sincere, and means well, but the problem he’s referring to — the systemic racism of the British police...
He’s sincere, and means well, but the problem he’s referring to — the systemic racism of the British police...
- 10/4/2020
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
The third of five chapters of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” miniseries to screen at the New York Film Festival is once again set in the recent past and once again feels like it’s talking about today and tomorrow. “Red, White and Blue” stars John Boyega as an idealistic Londoner in the early 1980s who thinks he can improve the police department from within, only to learn the hard way that reform is no easy task.
Citizens of the United States and elsewhere are currently grappling with the idea of reforming the police versus the idea of abolition. The latter notion suggests that the structures and policies of modern policing have grown so rotten from within — due to white supremacy and unequal justice based on race and class — that starting over is the solution, rather than merely trying to cement the cracks. By the end of “Red, White and Blue,...
Citizens of the United States and elsewhere are currently grappling with the idea of reforming the police versus the idea of abolition. The latter notion suggests that the structures and policies of modern policing have grown so rotten from within — due to white supremacy and unequal justice based on race and class — that starting over is the solution, rather than merely trying to cement the cracks. By the end of “Red, White and Blue,...
- 10/4/2020
- by Alonso Duralde
- The Wrap
While Steve McQueen’s five-film anthology “Small Axe” presents a collage of complementary stories from London’s West Indian community, “Red, White and Blue” plays like a breaking point. The two installments revealed earlier on the festival circuit, “Mangrove” and “Lovers Rock,” both showcase a self-sufficient community navigating the existential threat of institutional racism, but the protagonist of “Red, White and Blue” aims to improve the system by joining it.
Needless to say, that’s no easy task for Leroy Logan (John Boyega), who doesn’t exactly find a welcoming crowd when he becomes the sole Black officer in the Metropolitan Police Force circa 1983, and “Red, White and Blue” finds him at constant odds with his idealism. . The movie is both a ferocious indictment and a call to action that embodies Logan’s cause, even if it’s doomed from the start.
Co-written by British-Caribbean playwright Courttia Newland (who also...
Needless to say, that’s no easy task for Leroy Logan (John Boyega), who doesn’t exactly find a welcoming crowd when he becomes the sole Black officer in the Metropolitan Police Force circa 1983, and “Red, White and Blue” finds him at constant odds with his idealism. . The movie is both a ferocious indictment and a call to action that embodies Logan’s cause, even if it’s doomed from the start.
Co-written by British-Caribbean playwright Courttia Newland (who also...
- 10/4/2020
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Even without yet having seen all five of the original films in Steve McQueen’s riveting Small Axe anthology for Amazon and BBC, which surveys two decades of West Indian experience in London, it seems appropriate that the series concludes with a story of Black resistance embodied in the determination of one idealistic man. After celebrating the nourishing force of community in Lovers Rock and the power of collective protest in Mangrove, McQueen intensifies the focus in Red, White and Blue on individual action. The subject is distinguished Metropolitan Police Force veteran Leroy Logan, played in a performance of smoldering gravitas, maturity and integrity ...
- 10/3/2020
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Even without yet having seen all five of the original films in Steve McQueen’s riveting Small Axe anthology for Amazon and BBC, which surveys two decades of West Indian experience in London, it seems appropriate that the series concludes with a story of Black resistance embodied in the determination of one idealistic man. After celebrating the nourishing force of community in Lovers Rock and the power of collective protest in Mangrove, McQueen intensifies the focus in Red, White and Blue on individual action. The subject is distinguished Metropolitan Police Force veteran Leroy Logan, played in a performance of smoldering gravitas, maturity and integrity ...
- 10/3/2020
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Issues of bigotry, belonging, race and redemption and are unpicked in this majestic biopic of police officer Leroy Logan
Steve McQueen’s five-movie series for the BBC, Small Axe, only gets more thrilling and captivating with the appearance of this new episode at the New York film festival. He is setting new gold standard for drama – and cinema – on screens of any size.
Related: Lovers Rock review – Steve McQueen throws the best party ever...
Steve McQueen’s five-movie series for the BBC, Small Axe, only gets more thrilling and captivating with the appearance of this new episode at the New York film festival. He is setting new gold standard for drama – and cinema – on screens of any size.
Related: Lovers Rock review – Steve McQueen throws the best party ever...
- 10/3/2020
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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