Filmed just before BIRTH OF A NATION (2016) - and its director's subsequent career implosion due to sexual assault allegations - Nate Parker's AMERI-CAN (2014) is a slickly produced if ham-fisted short, attempting to tackle the subject of police violence - a topic more relevant than ever - yet already feeling surprisingly out-of-date.
Centering, perhaps surprisingly, around a white family, the film begins with tense dinner table conversation, as eldest son Justin (Jance Enslin, good in a fairly thankless role) requests and is denied - for unspecified reasons - a night out with his friend. "You don't mind him coming over here," the kid protests, but his father assures him, in a later bedroom convo as he prepares to leave for his night job, that he'll understand when he's older.
No prizes - particularly if you've read the film's on-the-nose plot summary - for guessing the next cut is to dad sitting in a squad car, and he's soon pulling over to harass a trio of young black men just standing around about their involvement in a local robbery. After a sufficient amount of macho posturing, dad lets the guys go, and is quickly sucked into a chase with a band of hooded youths, who lead him to a shadowy loading area behind a looming industrial edifice. Startled as one of the boys bolts from the shadows to escape, the guy fires blindly, and, once again, no prizes for calling who's waiting beneath the hoodie.
Overall, the film is professionally produced and finished, with nice cinematography, good performances (though Joseph Millson as the dad goes a bit overboard in the final scenes), and fluid direction. The problem is with the script, which is just so ham-fisted in laying out its "what if it were your son?" twist that it sinks the whole operation. That the film closes with a full TWO-MINUTE montage (in a 14-minute short) of people of all ages and ethnicities pulling down masks and hoodies to reveal the faces beneath should give you some indication of its delicacy of touch.
The film is capped off with the earnest hashtag #AllLivesMatter, since coopted and inverted to mean the exact opposite in the few years hence, and stressing just how far we've come in such a short time. That we still have a long way to go is in no doubt; unfortunately, AMERI-CAN nowhere near evinces the depth of vision to help us get there.
Centering, perhaps surprisingly, around a white family, the film begins with tense dinner table conversation, as eldest son Justin (Jance Enslin, good in a fairly thankless role) requests and is denied - for unspecified reasons - a night out with his friend. "You don't mind him coming over here," the kid protests, but his father assures him, in a later bedroom convo as he prepares to leave for his night job, that he'll understand when he's older.
No prizes - particularly if you've read the film's on-the-nose plot summary - for guessing the next cut is to dad sitting in a squad car, and he's soon pulling over to harass a trio of young black men just standing around about their involvement in a local robbery. After a sufficient amount of macho posturing, dad lets the guys go, and is quickly sucked into a chase with a band of hooded youths, who lead him to a shadowy loading area behind a looming industrial edifice. Startled as one of the boys bolts from the shadows to escape, the guy fires blindly, and, once again, no prizes for calling who's waiting beneath the hoodie.
Overall, the film is professionally produced and finished, with nice cinematography, good performances (though Joseph Millson as the dad goes a bit overboard in the final scenes), and fluid direction. The problem is with the script, which is just so ham-fisted in laying out its "what if it were your son?" twist that it sinks the whole operation. That the film closes with a full TWO-MINUTE montage (in a 14-minute short) of people of all ages and ethnicities pulling down masks and hoodies to reveal the faces beneath should give you some indication of its delicacy of touch.
The film is capped off with the earnest hashtag #AllLivesMatter, since coopted and inverted to mean the exact opposite in the few years hence, and stressing just how far we've come in such a short time. That we still have a long way to go is in no doubt; unfortunately, AMERI-CAN nowhere near evinces the depth of vision to help us get there.
