Given how long police brutality has been a national issue, its depiction in film is surprisingly rare. However, as the issue has gotten more exposure in the media through social media and technology, more movies have covered the topic head-on. Recent movies like Blindspotting, Detroit, 13th, BlacKkKlansman, Sorry to Bother You, a remake of SuperFly, The Hate U Give, and Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk all cover the topic of injustice in law enforcement with nuance and style.
In an article about a surge in films about police brutality for The Guardian, Charles Bramesco looks at the limits of the genre, the fact that characters must often stand in for belief systems, and the recurrent depiction of the "good cop" trying to bridge the gap between poor black communities and a system of law enforcement. He writes, "Because cinema must couch its polemics in narrative, characters too must stand in for assertions and their rebuttals, imperfectly conducting a dialogue with themselves. In this case, the “good” cop’s torn allegiances to his badge and his race are intended to embody two sides in this dialogue, though the subject often requires an even defter touch than that." In his eyes, the depiction of police brutality in film is inherently imperfect and incomplete.
But isn't any depiction of an issue in film necessarily incomplete? The benefit of narrative media is that it has a more wide-ranging audience than an essay or an academic argument might, and that it asks its audience to empathize with its themes. Films about police brutality can't be dismissed as imperfect simply by virtue of their being films. They have the power to communicate very real issues. As Aisha Harris wrote for The New York Times, "These productions are an opportunity to bring systemic inequalities to light via established characters and force viewers who may otherwise choose to ignore the news to at least contemplate the disparities, if even for a moment."
