Movie Review: American Son

American Son ** / *****

Directed by: Kenny Leon.

Written by: Christopher Demos-Brown.

Starring: Kerry Washington (Kendra), Jeremy Jordan (Larkin), Steven Pasquale (Scott Connor), Eugene Lee (Lt. John Stokes).

 

I wanted to like American Son – I really, truly did. I don’t mind when adaptations of plays don’t try and open things up for the movies – in fact, I often think that opening things up is what leads to the film versions losing what made the plays work in the first place. And I genuinely believe that the film has its heart in the race place – that it is earnestly trying to deal with very complex issues about race and police brutality. But the dialogue is so on the nose that you find yourselves rolling your eyes, more than thinking about what is being said. The characters are not really characters either – more stand-ins for their point of view. What ends up happening then is American Son becomes Crash in a microcosm – but not even that good.

 

The movie takes place almost entirely in a police waiting room in the middle of the night. Kendra (Kerry Washington) has been called, because her son’s car was involved in an “incident” – but they won’t tell her what kind of incident, where her son is, or really anything else. He is 18 after all, and the car is registered to her soon to be ex-husband, not her. She grows increasingly frustrated dealing with Officer Larkin (Jeremy Jordan), a young white cop, whose attempt to say things like “I understand” come across as condescending to this intelligent black woman (she is a college professor) – and may be masking some casual racism the cop has. When her soon-to-be ex-husband, Scott (Steven Pasquale) does arrive – it’s a different story. He’s white after all, and a FBI agent, and Larkin doesn’t try any of those condescending tactics on him. Still, he doesn’t tell them much more information either – insisting they have to wait for the AM Liaison Officer – Lt. Stokes – who has been paged, but it is 4 in the morning. But when Stokes gets there (which he eventually does – and not surprisingly, is black – this is a movie that wants to balance everything) – we will eventually find out what happened.

 

I think the biggest single problem with American Son is the large middle section of the film that is basically Kendra and Scott recounting their marriage, and their grievances throughout them. There are a lot of them, and given how steadfast both are in their opinions, you wonder how a marriage lasted at least 18 years (he just moved out 4 months ago) as they don’t seemingly agree on anything (the screenplay tries to address this – but does so poorly). What I was mainly interested in during this time is seeing a film about that marriage – how they negotiated their way through it for all those years. They have different views on, well everything, but Kendra is such a strong woman, you cannot help but wonder why she went along with all the things she clearly did for all those years. The characters don’t match they story they are telling.

 

The opening and closing – the first being with Kendra and Larkin, and the last being with Kendra and Stokes – are better. They are very obvious in everything they are doing, but at least, the characters here make sense. Larkin is the casual racist, trying not sound that way – and not quite pulling it off. Stokes is the realist – he is black man, from a bad neighborhood, who still grew up to be a cop, and he won’t take crap from anyone over it. He expresses not the way the world should be, but the way it is.

 

I will say that Washington is very good in the lead role. All the actors are really. The shot the film as they were doing the play on Broadway – with the same director – and they clearly know their roles very well. And yet, I wish the film were more thoughtful – less concerned about making political points, in on the nose dialogue (the final line in the film is particularly unforgivable) and more about the issues it raises. The film lectures, but I’m not even sure it knows what it’s really wanting to say. That’s why it doesn’t even reach the level of Crash – which was at least very clear about what it was saying.