Title: Fruitvale Station

Opens: July 12, 2013

Leaving the screening I compared notes with a fellow critic who said that the incidents surrounding Fruitvale Station on one tragic New Year’s Day would be served better as a documentary. In this age of smart phones that can take pictures, there would be enough archival material for such a project, and this is an undertaking that deserves to be seen both in narrative form (as available in July) and in doc form (which may or may not be considered). “Fruitvale Station” is based on an actual event, one that resulted in the shooting death of a twenty-two year old African-American living just outside San Francisco, one in which the shooter, a cop, was convicted only of involuntary manslaughter and released after eleven months. Never mind that the jury must have been either thick or racist to buy the shooter’s defense that he confused his pistol with a taser gun.

Writer-director Ryan Coogler opens the narrative on videos presumably taken by several passersby indicating that a huge, burly, cop manhandled a number of Black passengers on the BART while ignoring the White guy who started the brawl. The final minutes become that much more powerful given the build-up we get into the personality of the victim, who spent time in jail in 2007 and is no angel. He loses his job in a supermarket by being consistently late, and who nonetheless is trying to get his act together. When he goes justifiably ballistic on seeing a stray dog killed by a hit-and-run driver, we see that he has a strong moral sense.

Michael B. Jordan is in virtually every frame as Oscar Grant, in a loving relationship with one Sophina (Melonie Diaz), whose mother, Wanda (Octavia Spencer) is a woman who prays that his son continues on an ethical path, and whose delightful young daughter Tatiana (Ariana Neal) is crazy about her dad. We’re also shown that he has no racial animosities: in the supermarket where a young White woman wonders how to cook catfish, he puts her on the phone with his grandmother, who gives her the advice she needs. He even offers a store owner ten bucks to let a number of people into his bathroom though the business is closed. The point of all these brownie points, so to speak, is to leave the audience with the impression that his senseless killing lies heavily on the people he knows, including that “catfish” woman from the supermarket who coincidentally is on the BART and able to photograph the police riot for evidence.

The only minus, a considerable one, is that the family story that centers on Oscar Grant is generic: loving daughter, faithful girlfriend, caring mother. Rachel Morrison’s handheld camera is trained on close-ups of Michael B. Jordan, a handsome, charismatic fellow who doubtless has a long, successful career ahead.

Rated R. 95 minutes © 2013 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Overall – B