The movie in which the two best friends in the middle of sharp-witted comedy Emergency would want to appear is simple: a riotous college romp. After all, they are the perfect odd couple for it: Sean (RJ Cyler) a hardcore thrill-seeker, his buddy Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) bookish and morally diligent. Marking their graduation with one last grandstand night of hedonism, the stage is set for an affable update on a stoned and booze-sticky formula. Emergency almost gets to be that film. The catch is a complicating factor: being black in America.
Amid earnest talk of safe spaces, Kunle and Sean begin the movie simply aiming to become the first black students to complete a fabled tour of every party on campus. What transforms their evening and the movie is a living, breathing plot twist — for now at least. An unconscious young white woman, wandered in from who knows where, lies collapsed in obvious ill health in their living room. The duo have never seen her before. The same goes for their roommate Carlos (Sebastian Chacon), a sweet-natured Mexican astrophysicist. What do you do when wrong place, wrong time is your own home, right now?
The scenario is the first of many Rorschach tests. Some audiences may ask why the trio don’t just call 911. Others will instinctively grasp the reason — the ultra-loaded context of race and sex through American history that would, Sean is adamant, invite dire consequences. And so they set off on a hazardous mission, to get the girl to hospital themselves without attracting the police. The energy is frantic, with a hint of Martin Scorsese’s nocturnal screwball classic After Hours. Laughter and gravity co-star.
Director Carey Williams is a gifted multitasker. Emergency never loses the flavour of comedy; it can also be deeply astringent. In Jordan Peele’s Get Out, we had the liberal white Obama voters who revealed themselves as monsters. They might be cousins to the well-heeled couple here who chase Sean and Kunle out of their neighbourhood, Black Lives Matter placard visible on their lawn. In the end, Williams pulling the story back to the bittersweet dynamic between Sean and Kunle feels like the most radical move of all: two dudes who just want to be black and in an average innocent campus movie.
★★★★☆
In US and UK cinemas from May 20 then on Prime Video from May 27