Review of Fruitvale Station (2013) by Chris A — 31 Jan 2014

Michael B. Jordan is an amazing actor. He's the sole reason I watched this finally. While its not a bad film by any means, I do feel I went in with higher expectations than I should I have. This movie had been tremendously hyped up so I had to finally watch it. That being said, I don't feel the film as a whole matched the hype, but MBJ certainly did. The majority of the first act and a half are used to establish MBJ's character and through certain events they try to get the audience to feel for him and the rough situation he's in. And you do, thanks to MBJ, but there's also plenty of times he's portrayed as not the same person that's trying to better himself. He lies, he threatens people, but then they flip it back to he's a caring father and trying to provide. While those moments work, the other moments tend to negate it. I feel they took to long trying to establish his character. When you have an actor of that caliber, they could have used half of what they used to establish him and it would have been equally effective and you would have felt just as much for him in the end. And it wouldn't kill them to lock the camera off every once in a while. The handheld was too shaky for my taste, especially in the last 20 minutes or so of the film. Everything els technical-wise I had no complaints about. Editing was decent, pacing starts a bit slow but picks up when it should.

So as I said, not a bad movie by any means, and should definitely be given a shot if you haven't seen it, I just feel it didn't live up to the hype around it, with the exception of MBJ. That's just me though, everyone's different. Check it out!