#Fruitvale station movie
#Fruitvale station tv

As the scene escalates, you can feel his anger grow even as he struggles to keep it under control, until suddenly he can't and is wrestled to the ground by the guards. As soon as she brings up his girlfriend and daughter, you see the first flicker of anger cross his face, but he controls it. His mother Wanda (Octavia Spencer) is there to visit him, and Oscar is all warmth and smiles. His standout scene comes during the prison flashback. It's equally mesmerizing to watch Jordan as Grant smile and play with his daughter as it is when his eyes go dark and you can see the rage coiling within before it erupts.

#Fruitvale station tv

Jordan has been flitting around the periphery of TV for a while now with roles on “The Wire” and “Friday Night Lights,” but here he makes a superstar leap straight into the realm of Oscar contention. A lot of this comes from the frankly extraordinary performance of Michael B. What makes “Fruitvale Station” work is that writer/director Ryan Coogler (an Oakland native) and his cast show how normal Grant is, how he could've been anyone. Furthermore, we see several instances where Grant lashes out in anger at figures in authority, which likely played a role in his death. A brief flashback details his earlier stay in prison on drug charges, and in desperation Grant comes very close to making another drug deal before having a last-minute attack of conscience. This is not to say “Fruitvale Station” makes Grant out to be a saint. We see him take his young daughter to preschool, plead for his old job back, go to New Year's Eve dinner with his family.

#Fruitvale station movie

With the exception of cellphone footage of the shooting at the beginning (the footage is extremely disturbing, all the more so for the lack of the blood and guts most movie violence entails) and some documentary shots at the end depicting a rally a few years after the shooting, the movie takes place almost entirely on the last day of Grant's life. “Fruitvale Station” is shot primarily in the format of a documentary. What it wants, what it demands, is conversation and introspection.

It's impossible to come away from the movie without the feeling that Oscar Grant should still be alive and that the officer absolutely deserved his sentence, but “Fruitvale Station” is not out to sell a “message” or start a revolution. The great strength of “Fruitvale Station” is that it presents the shooting as a horrific tragedy on the part of real people, not a case of the system beating up on the powerless.

In terms of the movie, however, the politics of what happened are secondary. It's based on a true story a jury convicted the officer of involuntary manslaughter, and he was sentenced to two years in prison, of which he served about eight months before being granted parole. This is a movie in which a black teenager in Oakland, Calif., is shot and killed by a white police officer at a train station. Oscar’s life and tragic death would shake the Bay Area – and the entire nation – to its very core.Before delving into the heart of what makes “Fruitvale Station” such an important and effective movie, we need to dispense with the political baggage surrounding it. His resolve takes a tragic turn, however, when BART officers shoot him in cold blood at the Fruitvale subway stop on New Year’s Day. Crossing paths with friends, family, and strangers, Oscar starts out well, but as the day goes on, he realizes that change is not going to come easily. Not sure what it is, he takes it as a sign to get a head start on his resolutions: being a better son to his mother (Octavia Spencer), whose birthday falls on New Year’s Eve, being a better partner to his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz), who he hasn’t been completely honest with as of late, and being a better father to Tatiana (Ariana Neal), their beautiful four year-old daughter. Jordan), a 22-year-old Bay Area resident who wakes up on the morning of Decemand feels something in the air. dramatic film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, director Ryan Coogler’s FRUITVALE STATION follows the true story of Oscar Grant (Michael B. Winner of both the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic feature and the Audience Award for U.S.