Review #929: 'Fruitvale Station' (2013)

For those unfamiliar with the shocking events that took place in Oakland, California on New Year's Day in 2009, black youth Oscar Grant was detained by police officers on his way back from celebrating the new year, handcuffed, and eventually shot in the back while face down on the floor by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle. In the opening scene of Fruitvale Station, we see one of the few grainy mobile phone videos taken of the incident. The camera is shaky, the audio is muffled, but the incident itself is as clear as day. What happened was undoubtedly a strange event, and writer/director Ryan Coogler doesn't try to make any sense of it. Instead, he is interested in showing us the human being behind the headlines.

Starting 24 hours before the shooting, Oscar (Michael B. Jordan) is in bed with his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz), and the two have a young daughter who naturally interrupts them moments before getting their freak on. It's a relatively uneventful day - Oscar visits a grocery store in an attempt to regain the job he lost a couple of weeks earlier due to being frequently late, sits down for dinner with his family, takes care of a stray dog, and ponders a potential drug deal. He's no saint, but he is a man trying to turn his life around and winds up tossing the bag of weed in his closet into the ocean. A former convict, Oscar hopes for a fresh start with his girlfriend and daughter and prepares to see the new year in with Sophina and his friends.

While it was a wise move to avoid any social commentary and attempt to unravel the mystery of just what happened on that day, this is undoubtedly a one-sided view and subtly whitewashes it's lead character. While a dark past is certainly hinted at, Oscar is portrayed as an extremely nice guy, and a dramatic narrative is forsaken in favour of a relentlessly positive depiction of a man we actually know very little about. Technically, the film is crisp-looking and has a naturalistic flow to it, with the scenes of family bonding never feeling forced or ham-fisted. Jordan is excellent, highly charismatic and proving rather imposing when called upon, and he will no doubt grow into a star despite the recent failure of Fantastic Four (2015). Mehserle was not charged for the murder - there's a strong argument that he actually meant to pull a taser -  but we will probably never know what really happened on the platform of Fruitvale Station.


Directed by: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie