90% Fruitvale Station

All Critics (70) | Top Critics (27) | Fresh (63) | Rotten (7)

Fruitvale Station's wrenching power lies in the specificity of its storytelling and the ordinary human warmth of the world it conjures.

From the moment the arrest begins, the film is blunt and stunning, a completely absorbing, protracted nightmare.

Although Coogler surely wants his movie to serve as a weapon against racially charged police brutality, he's smart enough, and sensitive enough, to know that this is above all a human tragedy -- and not a political rallying point.

Coogler's film is shaky, sometimes literally slipping out of focus even as its own vision remains resolutely blinkered.

"Fruitvale Station" is a potent dramatic chronicle of contemporary American life, crackling with energy and possibility, made with the cooperation of Grant's mother and girlfriend.

In the end, what is the meaning of the film?

A viscerally wrenching experience, filled with foreboding from the first frame but stylistically naturalistic.

Strives only for an emotional response rather than an intellectual one.

Coogler's goal is clear - to put a human face on Grant, to make him recognizable.

Though the film's ending is no mystery, the personal details are what make this story so absorbing and so moving - more so precisely because his fate is already known.

It's a heartbreaking story that is so emotionally powerful that, while I may not want to see again, if it's on I won't be able to help but see it's tragic conclusion again.

"Fruitvale Station" will emotionally move you and simultaneously make you appreciate the filmmaking abilities of Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan.

There's great soul to the work, which gives a complete picture of a young man's life in microcosmic form.

BART allowed Coogler to shoot on location, and the young filmmaker, working with a score of actors and a crowd of extras, shows more competence in placing the camera coherently than many action directors with access to multimillion-dollar budgets.

Coogler shows the storytelling maturity and restraint to keep the focus squarely on the characters, not so much on the actual act of bloodshed itself but the wounds exacted upon the direct victims, witnesses, and families alike.

'Fruitvale Station,' is one the most endearing and profound films that echoes the essence of humanity. Ryan Coogler's feature debut gives Michael B. Jordan a career making performance.

Many will respond to the film as a gut-level human interest piece, but it's as curtailed and nuance-free a character study as it is a political polemic.

The closeness of family and the feeling of community comes across as genuine in every scene...

The actual events already serve as a parable of race in America, but Coogler's dramatization does them justice.

Galvanizing, tense gritty-indie, brilliantly acted by Jordan and Spencer. Very much worth watching even though the too-neat, manipulative screenplay undercuts it artistically.

"Fruitvale Station" is about what we can imagine when we cast our gaze across the longstanding divides in this persistently, cancerously segregated American society.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fruitvale_station/

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