Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

Alex Wheatle may be my least favorite in director Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” collection, only in that I wanted more. This is yet another true story, this time about the young adult novelist Alex Wheatle, having grown up without his parents in a group home, and ultimately serving time in prison for participating in the 1981 Brixton Riot in South London.

I suppose it could be argued that McQueen deflty whittles down Wheatle’s story to its barest essence, presenting this installment of his so-called “Collection of Five Films” at a mere 66 minutes. That makes it the shortest installment thus far, ablbeit barely shorter than the second entry, Lovers Rock, which clocked in at 70 minutes. Lovers Rock as presented, however, with an aesthetic much like an extended music video, worked well with the shorter run time. Music also plays significantly in Alex Wheatle’s story, though not nearly to the same extent; regardless, the resulting effect is as though these two shorter entries serve more as a sort of interlude between the entries that are closer to feature length. (Mangrove and Red, White and Blue, both excellent, are 127 minutes and 80 minutes, respectively.)

As this “collection” goes on, with its weekly release of the next installment, really none of them near the feature length of the first, the more it does feel like an anthology series meant for television. I’ve been reviewing each of them so far, though; I can’t stop now! They’ll just have to stand as the shortest “films” I have ever reviewed.

And Alex Wheatle is a solid film on its own terms. It just feels lightly incomplete. Newcomer Sheyi Cole is well cast in the title role, serving a quasi-Citizen Kane narrative structure as he tells his story in flashbacks to his cell mate in prison. I’d love to see a version of this film with a second hour, which tells the story of how Wheatle finds success as a writer in the 21st century. Evidently, McQueen isn’t interested in that, although we do see by the end how he gains interest in other authors who clearly later become influences on his work.

Perhaps McQueen is attempting to avoid any kind of fatigue on the part of the viewer in regards to scenes depicting riots and uprisings—I don’t know—but he makes an interesting choice here, presenting the actual event of the 1981 Brixton Riot almost exclusively through still photos of it with voice-over narration. We then get brief scenes of Alex hiding from the police directly after the uprising, and then later getting arrested during a police raid on his building.

As with the other installments before it, the characters in this story have Jamaican heritage. This makes sense as part of this project clearly very personal to Steve McQueen, who is himself of Caribbean heritage—although, like Alex Wheatle, he was born British. Wheatle, in fact, after growing up in a mostly white home for boys and thus gets raised and conditioned in very British ways, finds himself in a Black neighborhood as a young adult where he has to learn how to speak and behave in ways that allow him to blend in. Early on, he naively addresses a police officer politely, sparking frustration among the would-be friends trying to teach him how to get by.

There’s a moment when we see Wheatle talking to his cell mate, and he says “It was always all about the music.” Oddly, Alex Wheatle the film is hardly the same: his experience as a budding young musician gets surprisingly little attention. If it wasn’t actually all about the music, why have him tell us that?

Still, Alex Wheatle is very well shot and well acted, and although I would hesitate to say this one works as a standalone piece anywhere near as well as the other films do, it does fit well into the big picture McQueen is attempting to represent in terms of the Black experience in Britain.

*Alex has understandably had enough but I want more.*

Overall: B