The three tales in Monsters and Men – the debut feature from up-and-coming filmmaker Reinaldo Marcus Green – weave into each other seamlessly, without mention or pause, without title cards to announce the shift. All three surround a police shooting in Brooklyn, New York. Specifically, on the corner of Decatur Street and Throop Avenue, deep in the heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant, the neighborhood immortalized in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. All three stories are earnest, somber tales of the ripple effects of tragedy and injustice, and the feeling of helplessness in the face of a violent, immoral power. The film is clear-eyed and assured in its message: it asks the world to do better and hopes that you’re listening.

There’s Manny Ortega (Anthony Ramos), a father and husband trying to find work in New York City. Though trying to secure stability and maturity as his young daughter grows, Manny still likes playing dice with his friends on the street corner, and interacting with all the characters in his neighborhood. One of those characters is Darius Larson (Samel Edwards), a town favorite known for standing outside the bodega on Decatur, dispatching wisdom and selling loosies. Manny happens to be there when the police try to arrest Darius, and Manny’s cell phone records a video as an officer shoots Darius dead. Another member of the NYPD, Dennis Williams (BlackKklansman‘s John David Washington), hears about the shooting and suddenly he’s faced with a familiar tension.

Dennis has been a cop for a long time, but he still gets pulled over by police for no reason when he’s in plain clothes. Darius Larson was killed by an officer known for his troubled behavior, but Dennis fears retaliation from a fiercely loyal department known for outcasting those who go after their own. Dennis wants to be the cop who changes the neighborhood’s jaded perception of police, but he begins to fear how possible it even is. In that neighborhood lives Zyric (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a five-tool baseball prospect still in school who has serious consideration from major league teams. His father, Will (Rob Morgan), has a high emotional investment in Zyric’s possible pro career, but the young teenager finds himself more and more consumed by the growing outrage in the black community, and wishes to contribute to their fight against injustice.

The three part structure of Monsters and Men‘s script reminded me a bit of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros in the way it stressed the separation between its stories, as opposed to the connections. These three men live in the same neighborhood, and yet live completely different existences. All three have insecurities, a discomfort in their own skin, a fear of doing the right thing in the face of monolithic institutions. Manny and Zyric have to risk jeopardizing future plans (Manny’s career opportunities, Zyric’s chances as a pro prospect) if they want to help bring down the people who murdered Darius. Dennis wants to believe in the morality of his profession, despite seeing its troubled core ever time he comes to work. Telling on another cop is notoriously frowned upon, but what about his own personal principles?

This is the second film in a month where John David Washington plays a dedicated police officer forced to question the integrity of the force. Monsters and Men isn’t nearly as provocative as BlackKklansman, but it does manage to both be fair to its characters and still have a very clearly defined message. As Officer Williams, Washington is a man torn apart, a proud policeman so scared of the precinct’s reputation that he doesn’t want his son to wear an NYPD shirt on Parent Appreciation Day. Manny, his personality and way of life so infused in the community that Darius embodied can’t help but put his family’s life on the line and post his incriminating cell phone video on the internet – and that action brings much unwanted attention from NYPD. Without that video, Zyric does not consider putting his athletic aspirations on hold to fight against the police who constantly stop and frisk young men like him just for wearing hoodies.

Very shrewdly, Green never tries to give his characters comfortable conclusions. We get a sense of where their actions will lead, but the lid is shut before we get solid resolution. That might frustrate some, but I found it refreshing that Green doesn’t attempt to take it upon himself to solve anything. This is about the emotional fragility of a community afraid of those who are meant to protect, and how that lack of trust affects marriages, friendships, fathers and sons, even major league scouting showcases. This film is incredibly powerful, a sincere attempt to tackle a national nightmare without the hyperbolic rhetoric that often destroys arguments. And it sets Reinaldo Marcus Green as a new voice worth watching out for.

 

 

Written and Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green