Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, Kiersey Clemons, Blake Anderson, Rakim Mayers, Kimberly Elise, Chanel Iman, Roger Guenveur Smith, Forest Whitaker, Rick Fox, Bruce Beatty.

Pre-conceptions of someone’s abilities or life is perhaps arguably one of the worst ways in which to underestimate them or even under value them as human beings. It is prejudice by any other name and a bias that can have startling consequences when they turn and bite you where the sun refuses to shine.

Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope is a film that highlights that negativity of the fixed idea and delivers with dead pan assuredness with a terrific display of broad minded openness to a community that doesn’t get the credit it deserves, a sense of keen open humour but one with the best message and question of all the films to emerge in 2015.

Malcolm, Jib and Diggy are considered misfits, not fitting in to the supposed typical black culture that many see as being prevalent in American society, they study hard, they want good grades and they listen to a rap music that belonged in the areas of the inoffensive and yet one vital mistake made them go on the run in their neighbourhood as all sought the package they carried.

Shameik Moore is a revelation as the shy, geek fulfilled Macolm, it is a part in which he grows and seemingly nurtures as he takes his character beyond the restrictive bounds of where he is expected to fit in. Alongside the excellent Tony Revolori, once more proving his role in The Grand Budapest Hotel was no fluke, the main characters are so well fleshed out that they feel as though they have been living on the streets of West Coast America all their lives.

It is in the final monologue that the question is asked and it is one that even in the most open minded person can justifiably feel as though they have been missing the point all along, acceptance is everything but to be asked if you would have followed the story to its natural warm conclusion based on the colour of some one’s skin really does bring it home that pre-conceptions of any kind are a waste of potential.

Regardless of your interest in either the music to which the film makes great play with the audience’s expectations or in the way that drugs culture is taken on board, Dope is a film of great warmth and one in which really garners joy at the way a young black man can succeed, despite, as we all are, being seen in one way or another by society, the establishment, enemies, peers and friends.

Ian D. Hall