Fruitvale Station (2013)

I saw this movie in theater when it was new. It didn't do big business,
$17 million box office, but it cost only $900,000 to make. Even with Hollywood
accounting, I think it made a profit.

This is the story of Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan), a real-life person
rousted by transit cops and then shot after travelling into San
Francisco from Oakland on New Year's Eve 2008. He was shot by a transit
cop early morning New Year's Day 2009, and then died. He was 22. I think
Jordan would have been 26 during production so he's playing 4 years
younger.

This made national news. It was an early incident of a bad police shooting
captured on cell phone video.

I did like this movie. It's a fictionalized portrayal of his last day.
It's not sensationalized and Grant isn't a saint. He had knocked up his
girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz) maybe when they were still in high school,
but their 4 year old daughter is adorable.

Yes, he's been to prison for selling drugs (marijuana) and he's cheated
on Sophina with other women, and he was fired from his job as grocery
clerk for showing up late. That day, he tries to make amends and turn
over a new leaf.

There's a flashback to a prison visit by his mother Wanda (Octavia Spencer).
This scene gives Spencer an opportunity to demonstrate her acting chops,
as she runs through a series of emotions being scared for Oscar and
disappointed in him. She tells him she won't visit and that he's got to
shape up for his daughter.

After the flashback, he's discarded his package of drugs and won't
distribute it to his friend dealing drugs. He gives him his money back.

Question: He's in prison at San Quentin. While that's handy for
visitations from the Bay area, why would a nonviolent offender have been
sent to a maximum security prison?

Earlier in the day, he's in the grocery store he was fired from at the
fish counter buying fish for his mother's party; she was born on New
Year's Eve. Probably the best scene in the movie: A young white woman
Katie (Ahna O'Reilly) wants to impress her white husband with southern
style fried fish and has no clue what she's doing. Oscar puts her on the
phone with his grandmother who gives her an impromptu cooking lesson.

His day is mundane. He promises his girlfriend he won't cheat on her
again and finally confesses that he had been fired. She's a bit pissed
that he got rid of the drugs as they need the cash but starts to see him
in a new light.

They drop off the kid as the want to go into San Francisco to see
fireworks. Her mother won't take her but her sister -- with six kids --
does.

At his mother's birthday party, his mother, worried that they'll both be
drinking, urges them to take BART. They travel with a group of friends;
all jump the clamshells to board BART.

The BART trains are quite crowded unlike real life but New Year's Eve
may be an exception. On board into San Francisco they observe the new
year. Pretty much all we see in town is that he talks a restaurant
manager who has just closed up into letting the women use the bathroom.

The fateful incident: On board heading back into Oakland, there's the
coincidence of Katie spotting him and calling out his name. This
attracts the attention of dudes he served time with who want to beat him
up. A fight breaks out.

Cops are called and want to make the arrest at Fruitvale. They grab
three black men who weren't part of the fight. Oscar returns to the
train hoping to blend in but they drag him out anyway.

He's lying prone on the platform, handcuffed. One cop shoots him one
time. He does get taken to hospital but they can't save him.

There were two cops directly involved in his death. The one who shot him
was charged with first-degree murder but he successfully argues that he
was reaching for his taser, which the jury believed. He was convicted of
the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter. No need to tase anyone
well controlled in police custody.

Cops were fired and this forced the resignations of the BART executive
director and the chief of police.

The captions said there were demonstrations and some rioting (I don't
recall the rioting at all).

Critics raved about Jordan's performance in this low-key movie. Till
then he was mostly known for television, which he started as a child.
The Wire first season, three seasons as recurring character on All My
Children, a tv show I don't recall at all The Assistans, and of course,
later seasons of Friday Night Lights. He was also on Parenthood which I
didn't watch. Plenty of one-off appearances, and in various movies,
working his way up from bit parts to supporting roles to being part of
an ensemble.

He hasn't done Fantastic Four yet which somehow doesn't kill his career.
He hasn't done Creed yet either (in which we are supposed to suspend
disbelief that he's bulked himself up into a heavyweight boxer).

The director Ryan Coogler, from Oakland, was in film school at USC
(because of course he was) when the incident happened and wanted to make
a movie. Octavia Spencer got big bucks since her Oscar for The Help but
she waived her salary to keep the movie on budget as there just wasn't
any financing. She helped to find some.

Coogler's subsequent movies have had bigger budgets.