Blindspotting

2018 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A guy in Oakland has three days left of his probation but a childhood friend threatens to mess everything up for him.

I may have only seen this movie because the guy who works across the hall from me, an African American who is at least ten times cooler than I am, was planning to see it and I needed an excuse to talk to him. It didn't work.

I am happy I saw this, and I'm fairly sure that I had a completely different experience with this movie than the two black gentlemen sitting on either side of me in the theater. We both laughed, and I'm sure we both had an emotional reaction. I teared up a little even, especially during a manipulative-but-emotional moment near the end and when the title is explained and a theme fleshes out. But I think our individual contexts made this a different experience for us.

This movie has loads to say, so much that combined with the central drama and the dramatic subplots and all the comedy squeezed in, it's really something that should be a lot messier than it is. Themes about identity, gentrification, police brutality and/or killings, language, children, the role models of children, and perception are all squeezed in. Credit writers (and stars) Daveed Diggs (who I know from Blackish) and Rafael Casal (who I don't know at all) and director Carlos Lopez Estrada (who has made himself an impressive debut feature film here) with keeping it all together. There's a vibrancy to the storytelling and character development, and the ideas, when they aren't being hammered home, are nicely nuanced. The characters are extremely easy to root for, even when they are being shown at their most flawed. You understand their own contexts, mostly without ever being shown anything about their individual backgrounds, upbringings, or past experiences. There's one exception with a darkly-humorous and ultimately life-changing flashback.

Where this really succeeds is in its ability to force the audience to empathize. There's a moment when a light is directed at the camera--and therefore the audience--and it really puts you in the shoes of human beings that not a lot of people in Trump's America are willing to try on. A similar moment happens later with a gun.

Lots of good Oakland movies this year--this, Sorry to Bother You, Black Panther. Oakland must be where it's at. Is an M.C. Hammer biopic right around the corner?

New band name: Flammable Hipsters.