I’d never seen director Ryan Coogler’s film debut Fruitvale Station before, and given the state of my country right now, this seems to be the right time to see it. Based on a true story, the film depicts the final day in the life of Oscar Grant III. Grant died when a cop shot him during an arrest, and incident that was caught on cell phone footage.
The fact that incidents like that are not isolated and are still happening tells me that, yeah, people still need to see movies like this one.
After opening with the cell phone footage of the real Oscar Grant’s death–mostly, the camera cuts away before the shot that killed him goes off–we cut back to see Oscar (Michael B Jordan) and his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz) having an argument over Oscar’s infidelity. From there, we follow Oscar around on what he and no one else knows is his last day. For the most part, he does ordinary things. He takes his young daughter to preschool, hits the supermarket where he used to work until recently, helps a woman with a lesson on how best to fry fish, prep for a birthday party for his mother (Octavia Spencer), and a number of other activities that show he was basically a decent guy with a couple flaws. He was good with his daughter, friendly, helpful, and someone that clearly didn’t deserve what happened to him.
That fate hangs over this movie. Everything he does, the jokes he tells, the fights he has with his girlfriend and makes up again afterwards, considers selling drugs before dumping the whole supply, and then finally, the incident the opening of the movie promised. Said incident, foreshadowed by the way Oscar tries to help a dog that got hit by a car, is utterly heartbreaking. I legitimately had trouble watching something I knew full well was coming. The ending of this movie is raw, harsh, and far too timely as Oscar, a man we saw full of life and something of a friend to everyone he met, bleed out in a train station. Oh, and Coogler filmed those scenes in the real Fruitvale Station.
Set as a modern day tragedy, where knowing the ending doesn’t make what happened any less tragic, Fruitvale Station is a fantastic debut feature for Coogler, a great showcase for Jordan’s acting talent, and considering I saw one of the cops holding Oscar down with a knee to the neck just before the gun went off, something that perhaps hits far harder in 2020 than it did in 2013. If you haven’t seen this movie, see it now.
Grade: A
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