Fruitvale Station is the debut feature-length film from 27 year old Ryan Coogler.

In the early hours of New Year’s Day 2009 a young black man, Oscar Grant III, was shot in the back by a white police officer,  Johannes Mehserle , when allegedly resisting  arrest; this followed an altercation on a train which was then at Fruitvale Station in Oakland California. Johannes Mehserle was consequently sentenced for involuntary manslaughter serving 11 months in prison. (Mehserle’s name was changed for the film.)

Fruitvale Station starts with grainy images of Grant being shot and tells the back story leading up to events solely from Grant’s perspective.

The film is not a hagiography, it depicts Oscar Grant III as deeply flawed. Grant had a criminal record; had served prison time for drug dealing; had a quick and fierce temper; had lost his job for repeated poor attendance and had strayed from his long-term girlfriend, the mother of his young daughter. Even so, it was difficult not to be drawn to the conclusion that Coogler was trying to gloss over these traits by showing Grant had just started trying to turn his life around. The film showed his tender side – his love of dogs, his overall respect for women. It seemed just a touch contrived and was clearly inserted to ensure the audience was sympathetic to the victim. It was unnecessary – Grant’s death was tragic, and deemed unlawful, whatever his background.

What was far more convincing, due to its understatement, was its showing of the near inevitably of violence due to over-testosteroned macho posturing. This contrasted with the strong women in the film – his long-suffering girlfriend and his mother whose love of her son was not blind to his faults and his failings which impacted cruelly upon others.

Ryan Coogler, under the tutelage of Forest Whitaker, has made a promising start with this feature, even though he has been infected with wobbly camera syndrome – something I hope he’ll soon jettison. But he has created interesting characters with street dialogue that flowed naturally. Under his direction, both Michael B. Jordan as the doomed Grant and Octavia Spencer as his mother gave nuanced and stand out performances in a cast without any apparent weakness.

But ultimately, there was simply not enough story to maintain the 85 minutes of this film – Grant’s life was not interesting or controversial enough to fill the space. How much better the film could have been had Coogler given us Johannes Mehserle’s story as well. All we saw of Mehserle and his colleagues was their uniformed aggression in the few minutes leading up to the shooting – there was no attempt to humanise them. I understand Mehserle’s girlfriend gave birth the day after the shooting. Showing how events blighted other lives too would have given Fruitvale Station greater depth without in anyway diminishing its clear objective to highlight the on-going social problem of young negroes getting a raw and prejudicial deal from the law.

But Ryan Coogler has shown enough in this film to demonstrate that he has the ability to become an accomplished film-maker. Let’s hope he takes the opportunity.

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Tim Meade