![]() I'm not usually one to read or put much stock in IMDb reviews, particularly in advance of a film's release, but it's worth noting that as of this writing, nearly half of the user blurbs are not only negative, but grossly inaccurate, bafflingly charging the film with "whitewashing" the story of "Saint Oscar." "We elevate another hoodlum to the status of martyr," goes one typical review. That's why some early responses to the film are so puzzling. He's capable of being both kind and brutal, both honorable and troubling, both guilty and innocent.Ĭoogler's willingness to acknowledge Grant's flaws, to resist the urge to cast him as a martyr and instead paint the portrait of a troubled, sometimes "bad" guy, is what makes Fruitvale Station special-and challenging as drama and as commentary. Mere moments earlier, while visiting a friend at the butcher's counter, he helps a customer looking for help buying supplies for a fish fry by putting her on the phone with his grandma for tips-and he doesn't even work there anymore. But the entire sequence around that blow-up showcases the duality of his person. It's a foreboding turn of events, since we already know about his death-have already seen it, even-and thus presume that that anger will return to haunt him. In that one scene, Coogler (and the excellent Jordan) tactfully conveys how Oscar's rage switches on and how quickly it gets out of his control. When his request is refused, he loses his cool: He yells at, and even threatens, the man who could help him. Instead, he goes back to the store and begs his old boss for his job back. ![]() He lost his job at a grocery store weeks earlier (due to chronic lateness) and hasn't worked up the nerve yet to tell Sophina. He's hot tempered, has trouble with fidelity, and deals marijuana-though his New Year's resolution is to quit slinging and go straight. Jordan) is 22, living with his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz) and their daughter. Yet this is not merely a mournful docudrama it's a film of keenly observed behavior and subtle domestic details, one that offers a bravely complex portrait of a man unjustly killed. Over the 90 minutes that follow the iPhone clip that opens the film, writer/director Ryan Coogler dramatizes the day that turned out to be Grant's last. And in theaters across the country, Fruitvale Station considers those some questions about Oscar Grant. In that courtroom, and in the coverage of the events within it, a young black man's death has prompted speculation, assumptions, and judgment about his life. But upon seeing it in Fruitvale Station, my mind nevertheless leapt to Sanford, Florida, where the aural counterpart, tapes of 911 calls capturing the final moments of Trayvon Martin's life, have been unspooling for the past three weeks. In that moment, it seems wrong to think of anything but Oscar Julius Grant III, the man whose life was so brutally taken.
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