It is the fact that, alongside the other tales he will tell me about a childhood punctuated by incidents of racism and police profiling – about how when he first went to Nigeria as a ten-year-old he witnessed his uncles slaughtering a cow and fought the shiver down his spine to help heft buckets of still-warm blood – it is offered up to better illuminate exactly what this 28-year-old has been through and what he is made of. No, it is the conduct of its protagonist. But the point of this skilfully relayed, typically Boyega-ish story is not really its dramatic resolution. Of course, it did not come to a physical confrontation and two watery graves in the Atlantic (after 15 minutes or so of noisy back-and-forth, Boyega heard the approaching growl of a police boat, manned by AK-47-toting officers sent by the film’s production staff to look for him history sadly does not record just how quickly the boat’s would-be hostage taker soiled his pants).

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