a review of 弗鲁特韦尔车站

February 3/28: Fruitvale Station (Netflix streaming) Another one that I've been meaning to catch up with for a while, given how much I enjoyed Ryan Coogler's franchise-redefining Creed and eagerly anticipate his take on Marvel's Black Panther. I was mostly checked out of current events and politics in early 2009, since at the time I was dealing with personal fallout from the 2008 economic collapse. But it still embarrasses me to admit that I completely missed hearing about the tragic killing of Oscar Grant III in San Francisco on New Year's Day. It wasn't until the extrajudicial execution of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in 2014 that the Black Lives Matter movement really coalesced, but the events depicted in this film feel absolutely crucial to the spirit of the cause. The thing that surprised me most about the film was how Coogler expertly weaves the details that we know about Grant's last hours with things that we couldn't possibly know about. I'm used to noticing moments of artistic license in biopics, but the way Coogler shows Grant navigating the lesser obstacles of his daily life paints a fuller picture of him as a human being than the bare facts could do on their own. The most daring instance of this is the brief scene in which Grant befriends a dog wandering near a gas station, only to see the same dog get hit by a car moments later; it's a poetic moment that strains credulity, but ultimately underlines the film's ideas about how even well-meaning people are only helpless onlookers in the face of persistent systemic racism. Michael B. Jordan's performance here as Grant is incredible, to the point that it makes me mad that A) he didn't get any major Oscar/Golden Globes recognition for it, and B) that I'm only catching up to see it now. After this and his equally winning performance in Creed, this guy should be 10 times as huge in Hollywood as he is now, Fantastic 4 be damned.