Fruitvale Station By Ryan Coogler

867 Words2 Pages

Ryan Coogler’s “Fruitvale Station” is devastating to watch, and yet also incredibly rewarding. A dramatized recreation of the final 24 hours Oscar Grant III’s life before being killed on New Year’s morning 2009, the movie opens with the actual video of Grant and a few of his friends being brutally harassed by BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Police. We hear the onlookers yelling for the police to stop, to leave the kids alone. We see no response from the officers, except a muffled “I’m going to Tase him!” And then, we hear the shot ring out. And collectively, the onlookers gasp in horror. Here’s what we know for sure: Oscar Grant, an African-American, was 22 on that New Year’s morning, when he and his friends were pulled off a train under suspicion of fighting aboard the train. After the group argued with the officers, Grant was forced onto his stomach. This was when Officer Johannes Mehserle stood and shot him in the back. Grant passed away a few hours later at a local hospital, and Mehserle (who claimed to have been reaching for his Taser and accidentally grabbed his firearm) was arrested. After the shooting, there was a great deal of protesting and rioting in the …show more content…

We watch as Oscar drops his 4 year-old off at daycare, carefully sneaks her an extra snack, and heads to the supermarket. There, we find out he has recently lost his job, and flash back to prison where Oscar spent roughly two years for drug offenses. We watch as he struggles with the decision to either deal drugs and make some money, or fail to pay rent. He puts on different masks for different people; some know he’s lost his job, others do not. Some know he is struggling, others think he has turned a corner. It seems clear that the only people in his life who get the ‘real’ Oscar are his girlfriend Sophina (played by Melonie Diaz) and his daughter Tatiana (Ariana

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