Fruitvale Station

July 18, 2013

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In the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal, the Sundance hit “Fruitvale Station” has a whole new layer of tragic relevance, as its central figure, real-life police-brutality victim Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan), is eerily similar to slain teenager Trayvon Martin.

The social-injustice parallels at play make “Frutivale” an uncommonly topical film, and that it stands as a resonant conversation starter is a plus. But topicality can’t fully make up for overall shoddy and schmaltzy filmmaking, which ultimately undermines the incendiary issues at hand.

Grant was a 22-year-old Bay Area resident, who, in the wee hours of New Year’s Day 2009, was mortally wounded by a transit officer amid a scuffle at the titular train stop. His death sparked a national discussion about racial profiling, made all the more potent by the fact that multiple commuters recorded the incident on their smartphones.

But debut writer/director Ryan Coogler, who hails from Grant’s neighborhood, doesn’t bother to explore the weight of these larger discussions. His aim is to get at the heart of the person behind the politics, but the problem is, he fails to carve out a plausible man. Though played with terrific conviction by breakout star Jordan, Grant, depicted on the last day of his life, is developed in all the wrong ways, in a film that’s startlingly manipulative in terms of humanizing the marginalized and misunderstood.

All of Grant’s flaws, from pot dealing and former prison time to anger issues and tough-guy lingo, register as superficial. What’s left is a barrage of cheap and largely conjecture-based ploys for viewer sympathy, including a series of banal phone calls to loved ones, a flashback teeming with typical hard-assed “virtues,” and scenes with Oscar’s young daughter that, unfortunately, see their sincerity dashed out by Coogler’s fatal lack of restraint.

“Fruitvale” cloyingly forces us to admire Grant, and in doing so, reduces his story to the evening-news sentiments of countless killed statistics’ loved ones, thus unwittingly fueling the blind stereotypes that beget the deaths of the Grants and Martins of the world.