Fruitvale Station

The director Ryan Coogler’s début feature brings a full and just measure of righteous outrage to the true story of Oscar Grant, a twenty-two-year-old Oakland man who, early on New Year’s Day in 2009, was shot and killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit officer despite being unarmed. (The officer was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.) Coogler reconstructs, mainly from Grant’s perspective, the events leading up to the crime. As played with searching, cerebral energy by Mi­­chael B. Jordan, Grant—who had done jail time (seen in flashback) for a drug-related offense—was attempting to become a better father to his four-year-old daughter and a better partner for her mother, Sophina (Melonie Diaz). But the movie doesn’t turn him into a pristine hero; caught cheating on Sophina, caught lying to her about his unemployment, he comes off as a warmhearted, hot-blooded young man wrestling mightily with his demons. Coogler weaves a comforting web of family around Grant, including his mother (Octavia Spencer) and grandmother (Marjorie Crump-Shears), to show all the more poignantly the intimate devastation wrought by his death. The movie is the model of decency and respect, and does honor to a life unjustly ended; it offers few surprises but is nonetheless shocking.(In limited release.)