Whether you’re familiar with the story of Oscar Grant or you’ve never heard of him before, Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station is a film everyone should see. Based on the true life events of Oscar Grant, Fruitvale Station has already won the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic feature and the Audience Award for U.S. dramatic film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Hitting theaters on July 12th, audiences nationwide will have the option of seeing the moving story.
The movie begins at the end, so if you make it to the theater a couple of minutes late, and you aren’t familiar with the story, the suspense will still be there. Otherwise, you’ll spend the next hour and a half, ready to get back to the movie’s end. It’s a choice the director makes to get right to point, deciding to leave the intrigue out of this story.
The movie follows the events of one day, December 31st 2008, and because there isn’t much to cover foreshadowing is overused throughout the film. That may be the only real complaint here. It would have been nice to see a bit more backstory of our main character, Oscar, but the film isn’t ruined without it.
The film is by no means groundbreaking in terms of cinematography or plot. What it is however is a story that deserves to be told and dissected, hopefully for years to come. It involves an issue of social injustice that affected the Oakland community deeply and the movie helps keep the movement strong. For that reason the movie completely serves its purpose and is recommended for all theater goers.
Fruitvale Station is produced by Forest Whitaker and stars Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz and Octavia Spencer. It’s presented by the Weinstein Company.
Check out a trailer for the film here:
Fruitvale Station receives a PARL
Rating:
P…Horrible
PA…Tolerable
PAR…Good
PARL…Kinda Great
PARLÉ… Classic
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