Ryan Coogler’s powerful first feature, Fruitvale Station, came out of nowhere in January to claim both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Now this little movie that could, produced by Forest Whitaker and featuring a tour de force from up and comer Michael B. Jordan, as well as gripping turns from Oscar Winner Octavia Spencer, Ahna O’Reily, and Kevin Durand has just played to similarly rapturous response in Cannes, and it appears that we have our first prominent 2014 Awards Season contender on our hands.
Jordan, of Cloverfield and Friday Night Lights, plays Oscar Grant, the real life African American youth who was shot point blank in the head at Oakland’s Fruitvale BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Station by white subway cop, Johannes Messerle (Durand) in the early morning hours of January 1st, 2009. Grant’s brutal and unnecessary death, and the disturbing camera-phone footage of it that leaked soon after, would spark one of the most racially contested police brutality cases the Bay Area has ever seen and ignite a frenzy of a trial that many feared would lead to Rodney King Style Riots.
Though instead of focusing on the infamous aftermath of this tragedy, Coogler’s film portrays the final day of Grant’s life as he interacts with friends and family including his loving but hardened mother (Spencer) his weary girlfriend (Melonie Diaz) with whom he has a young daughter, and a “random” stranger (O’Reilly). Jordan’s dynamite performance has already garnered Oscar Buzz, not to mention comparisons to a young Denzel Washington, as he and Coogler make no attempts to tell a martyr’s tale. Instead, they paint a rounded, wholly real image of a young man raised by the streets, yet struggling to break the cycle for his family, all while the specter of Oscar’s own senseless demise at the hands of the troubled Messerle, looms in the distance.
Yes, we all know the outcome, but that doesn’t mean that the tale isn’t any less harrowing or tragic. In fact, raising all sorts of questions about police brutality, the rot of racism and preconceived judgment, not to mention the power of family, Fruitvale Station promises to strike a nerve with audiences beyond the film fest circuit when it arrives in theaters in the fall.
FRUITVALE STATION (distributed by The Weinstein Company), will open in limited release, on July 16th.
CLICK HERE for FRUITVALE STATION’s Facebook page.
CLICK HERE to see the film’s trailer.