It is hard to put into words how I feel after watching this movie. It is a very personal film for me. When I was a teenager, I witnessed a very similar incident of police taking unnecessary measures against a person who should not have been targeted. A very close family friend's son died after he called the police for what he believed was the process of a home invasion. It didn't take long for the police to turn him into the suspect and murder him in front of his disabled father. They did not try to talk to his mother and only told her to step aside. He was a 22 year-old Mexican-American young man. The official police report leaves a lot of details out and his family never got the justice they deserve. His father was a Vietnam veteran, just like Kenneth Chamberlain. Frankie Faison who plays Chamberlain gives an award-winning performance. He draws us in to his vulnerabilities and the traumas that shaped the man he became. After the horrific Rodney King beating and unimaginable George Floyd murder, I feel like most of us have witnessed enough brutality to realize policing must change in America (and around the world). We need more than just police reports. This movie explores a real-life incident in real-time. It captures the difficulties that police officers deal with, but also examines the threats many members of the community feel when they are helpless in police hands. The movie takes us into the internal and external dialogues police have with each other and with themselves. You cannot help but step into their shoes, into a high-intensity situation which requires methodological training. It shows the terrorization we are all feeling -where police and the community are on opposite ends. I can only hope that this movie creates a bridge between us all and opens the doors of dialogue; our cities must do better.
