Crown Heights

Brooklyn, 1980. Colin Warner, eighteen, is charged with a murder and convicted. He did not do it; the witness statement was taken under pressure and the file was wrong from the start. He goes to prison. Outside, one person does not give up: his childhood friend Carl King. Carl leaves his job, drives trucks to save money, teaches himself law, and spends twenty years trying to get the case reopened. Matt Ruskin writes and directs. Lakeith Stanfield plays Colin and Nnamdi Asomugha plays Carl. Asomugha came to acting from American football, moving into film after years as a professional, and is one of the producers here. The story is real. Colin Warner served twenty one years and was released in 2001. The case reached a wide audience after being told in detail on a radio programme, and that broadcast is the film's source. The film's interest is not the courtroom but duration. The narrative passes through the years one at a time while presidential speeches about fighting crime run in the background; the hardening of criminal policy and the refusal to reopen Colin's file move along the same line. It won the audience award at Sundance. Who it is for: viewers who follow wrongful conviction cases and films about the American penal system. Who it is not for: the narrative is slow and the repeated refusals are deliberately wearing, and the legal process is simplified in places.