Fruitvale Station

2013 movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Oscar Grant III celebrates the New Year, ready to make some changes in his life to be a better human being. Then, he's killed by a cop.

That's not a spoiler warning as some of the iPhone footage detailing the tragic events of this real-life event open up this movie. This is harrowing, and a lot of it is because of the Michael B. Jordan performance at the center of it. It's perfectly quiet and reflective when it needs to be, and there's enough bombast in there as well. Grant's final day is filled with minutiae because that's precisely the kind of stuff that a person's last day is filled with when you don't know that you're going to be shot in the back by a cop at a train station.

There's some manipulation here, but none of that makes it any less powerful. For me, I was on the edge of my seat during the climactic scene and hoping that Jordan's character would end up not being shot in the back by a cop at a train station.