Fruitvale Station (15)

Directed By Ryan Coogler

3/5

OPENING with camera-phone footage of a US transit cop shooting an unarmed black man on Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler’s film is based on a real-life event, the shooting of Oscar Grant in 2009.

The killing has resonance, since it brings to mind similar attacks by police on black men, most notably Rodney King in 1991 in the US and in Britain the shooting of Mark Duggan which sparked the so-called Tottenham riots of 2011.

Although all those cases are different, they’re linked by the usual media and racist assumption that they “must have deserved it.”

The motivation of the film is to counter those claims as the film follows Grant (Michael B Jordon), determined to turn his life around, in his daily activities. 

We see him trying to convince his girlfriend (Melanie Diaz) that he’s not playing around while promising his four-year-old daughter (Ariana Neal) that he’s a proper dad.

His mother Wanda (Octavia Spencer) has a birthday due and she wants to be sure he gets her a “righteous card without any flakey white folks.”

Flashbacks outline his criminal past and show that though he’s supposed to be working at a local store, he’s been sacked for turning up late.

The film is littered with links stringing together the story, including Grant meeting his mates, helping a white woman and showing he has a soft spot for dogs.

It verges on the schmaltz, underlined by his texts and calls including one to his grandma as she’s preparing the birthday feast.

Given you know the conclusion, all the soft soap does is to make the after-effects more shocking.

The officer’s defence? Confusion. He didn’t realise he’d shot Grant with his gun, thinking he had used a taser.

The point of the story is plain. Society is riven with prejudice, especially given the dialectic between oppression and defensive reaction.

It’s there from the family to the school, along with gangs in ghettoes which won’t be breached by preaching.

That’s the reason we have to work collectively, recognising our common humanity. As we know only too well, the alternative is fascism.