Fruitvale Station

Fruitvale Station (2013) covers 31 December 2008, the last day of Oscar Grant's life. Twenty two, living in Oakland, out of work, looking after his daughter, he goes into San Francisco for New Year's Eve. After a fight on the train back, the police put him face down on the platform at Fruitvale station and an officer shoots him in the back. The film opens with real footage. Passengers on the platform recorded the incident on their phones that night, and those recordings became a turning point both in the case and in the wider American argument about police violence. It is Ryan Coogler's first feature, made at twenty seven. Michael B. Jordan plays Grant, Octavia Spencer his mother and Melonie Diaz his partner. Coogler and Jordan's collaboration starts here and runs through Creed and Black Panther. Coogler is from Oakland and was living in the area when it happened; he prepared the film in consultation with Grant's family. It won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance in 2013 and the Avenir Prize in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. The running time is deliberately short at 82 minutes. The film does not comment; it follows the day. Good for: adaptations of real events, films about police violence, and Michael B. Jordan. Less good for: because the outcome is known there is a sense of waiting throughout, and the final section is hard to bear. Some critics wrote that Grant's day is constructed too favourably and the character smoothed out; that objection is arguable but it exists.