Jordan, grossed nearly $174 million at the global box office. In 2015, his spin-off, Creed, which starred Fruitvale leading man Michael B. He had grown up watching the Rocky movies with his dad, and wanted to explore the racial dynamic in those films. Those types of films didn’t play at the multiplexes in my neighborhood.” His next movie got a lot closer. “But when you make an indie film, the theaters that play it tend to be very specific. “Fruitvale was about the community that I grew up in, and I wanted nothing more than for people in communities like that to see it,” Coogler says. The film went on to win the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance in 2013. He has said his time there helped him better understand Grant, whose life was intertwined with the criminal-justice system. To make ends meet, Coogler took a job as a counselor alongside his father at the Juvenile Detention Center in San Francisco. Coogler went on to film school at the University of Southern California.Īfter graduating, he began developing what would become his first feature film, Fruitvale Station, the true story of Oakland native Oscar Grant, an unarmed man who was shot in the back by a police officer. There, a professor in a creative writing class suggested screenwriting. They sent him and his siblings to Catholic school, where Coogler played football and was good enough to get a college scholarship. His mother, a community organizer, and his father, a juvenile-probation counselor, moved the family to Richmond, Calif., when he was 8. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray, Ahna O’Reilly, and Octavia Spencer The impact of the last twenty minutes is devastating and moving – and we’re left with the deep knowledge that this was the unnecessary interruption of young man’s life.Īvailable to stream on Tubi and to rent on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime and Vudu. Octavia Spencer is also memorable as his mother. Together, Coogler and Jordan have forged one of the most productive and exciting director/performer collaborations in cinema. He makes us feel, understand and care for Oscar. Jordan – and his power and magnetism are undeniable. Coogler has gone on to extraordinary success – both commercial and artistical – helming the Oscar nominated “Creed” as well as the game changing action hero epic “Black Panther.” “Fruitvale Station” made a star out of Michael B. dramatic film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. “Fruitvale Station” won both the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic feature and the Audience Award for U.S. He sees the upcoming New Year as a an opportunity to do better – for his mom – his girlfriend and daughter. Coogler interrupts the chronological narrative and jumps to New Year’s Eve two years earlier with a scene of Oscar in jail being visited by his mother. We find out he’s been out of job for two weeks for he’s constantly late for work. We’re told in the first scene he’s cheated on the mother of his child. There’s complexity to this portrayal of Oscar – he’s not perfect. Later in the film, his young daughter – Tatiana – watches menacing fireworks through her backseat. Oscar sees a stray dog being hit by a driver who refuses to stop. The filmmaking uses a very realistic and understated approach. The result is that the fleeting – mundane moments we witness – acquire an almost elegiac quality. It also articulates how senseless the loss of a life is.Ĭoogler starts the film with actual footage of Oscar’s shooting – and then he dramatizes the hours preceding it. By showing us Grant’s last day – the seemingly ordinary moments compile into creating a full portrait of a person instead of allowing him to simply become another headline. “Fruitvale Station” documents the last 24 hours of Oscar Grant – who was shot in the back by BART Police on New Year’s Day in 2009 in the Bay Area. It is sad to report that “Fruitvale Station” (2013) – the masterful directing debut by Ryan Coogler – is still prescient and urgent given Monday’s death of George Floyd – who died after pleading that he couldn’t breathe while a police officer held him down with a knee on his neck.
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