An Eye-Opening Film That Makes Us Question Our Ways - Film Review of Fruitvale Station

"You shot me. I have a daughter." -Oscar Grant 

Fruitvale Station, staring Michael B. Jordan, is a film based on true events involving a young African American, Oscar Grant, and white police officers on the morning of January 1, 2009. Captured by an on-lookers cell phone video, the incident in which Oscar Grant was shot in the back by a white police officer while laying face down on a subway platform in the Fruitvale Station has caused much controversy and debate since. This film, in my opinion, is just one of many that try to open viewers' eyes to the issues that African Americans still face today.

I am “on the fence” with this film. I do believe that the film recreated the true events wonderfully, but it is hard to follow along with the amount of back-story that is put in with it. However, I do understand why the creators of the film may have wanted to put in the back-story. Oscar Grant, a known drug dealer with no job, struggled to get his life together and back on track to take care of his daughter and girlfriend, and prove to his mother that he could stay out of trouble. Show his back-story, show the amount of effort he was putting in to actually getting his life turned around for the better, just to have it taken away from him in a splits second time.

Within recent years, there has seemed to be a higher amount of debate focused on the tactics of the police, specifically police brutality. Many of these issues involving police brutality are issues in which there is white police brutality against African Americans. The stories, pictures, and videos that seem to fill the news lately played a decently big role in the way that I evaluated, and saw, this film.

I have mixed feelings on the film, Fruitvale Station. While I do think that the film portrays an excellent recreation of the events that happened on January 1, 2009, it is still hard to believe that incidents like that have happened and are still happening.