Review of Fruitvale Station (2013) by Nick O — 21 Jan 2014

I look inside the last day of a young man killed by a BART cop in Oakland in the wee hours of New Years Day 2009. The movie does a good job of showing that the young man had flaws - he had spent time in prison, he apparently had dealt drugs, he had some reliability issues - but that at his core he was a decent guy trying to do right for his daughter and girlfriend.

I think that is an important message as we often slip into thinking of criminals as nothing more than "thugs." While life's struggles are no excuse for crime, life is more complicated than the simple level to which we often reduce it.