If there's any reason to be harsh on this trailer it's for the tonal and musical shifts, bringing me \from celebratory to tense to calmed to angry. And that's not even a bad thing-- it's actually perfect way to get me even more interested in this film than I was already. After taking Sundance on a dark ride and earning some major awards in the process, Fruitvale Station is two months away from wreaking a small amount of havoc on the psyches of movie-goers across the nation, and it can’t get here fast enough. But it probably shouldn’t take the train to get here.
The Roots’ “Now or Never” is probably the perfect song to link the trailer’s lighter moments to the tragic real life story of the last day of Oscar Grant’s life. On December 31, 2008, Grant (Michael B. Jordan) was set to change his life patterns and resolve his relationships with his mother (Octavia Spencer), his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz) and his four-year-old daughter Tatiana (Ariana Neal). But fate is not as forgiving as his family, and a New Year’s Eve trip via Oakland’s rapid transit slowly turns more and more ugly. Enter some transit cops on a hair-trigger and one of the more avoidable tragedies in recent memory comes to its fully public fruition at Fruitvale Station.
It’s only been a few years since this incident and its subsequent court case made the news rounds, and this trailer easily brings up all the angst-ridden disgust that was felt at the time. So I can’t even imagine how excruciating the actual feature will be. Our own Katey Rich was “holding back tears and alive with anger” at the end of her screening, and I have a feeling everyone else will feel the same way.
I’ll make sure to bring my most rage-fueled handkerchief with me to the theater, when Fruitvale Station sees its July 16 release. Take a look at film’s first poster below.
