“All Story, No Movie”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Fruitvale Station is based on a true story about a tragedy that occurred in 2009 in the San Francisco Bay area.

Fruitvale Station

The title is the name of the station on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, or BART, where the event took place.

In fact, the movie opens with actual footage from the event, and then it goes into a couple of flashbacks in an attempt to fill out the story and show why it was such a tragedy.

The first flashback goes to the morning of New Year’s Eve, and we meet Oscar Julius Grant III, a young man 22 years old who is in bed with his girlfriend Sophina.

Oscar tells Sophina, “All I want is you and T, forever.”

“T” is their daughter, Tatiana, who is four years old.

December 31 is also the birthday of Oscar’s mother, Wanda, played by Octavia Spencer.  So, Oscar calls Wanda and makes arrangements for Wanda’s birthday party that evening, which will be attended by family and friends, and we watch Oscar throughout the day taking care of the arrangements.

He goes to the supermarket where his brother works to get the food and where Oscar also helps out a customer arrange a fish fry she is hosting by having her talk to Oscar’s grandmother, who gives the customer advice.

Oscar also talks to his sister, Chantay, and promises to let her have $300 so Chantay can pay her rent that month, even though from what we have seem so far, we wonder if Oscar even has that amount of money to give to Chantay.

Then we go into another flashback to a year earlier when Oscar is in prison on drug-related charges, and his mother comes to visit him.  Oscar gets into an argument with another prisoner, and it upsets his mother so much that she says that she won’t visit him anymore.

This flashback gives more background on Oscar and introduces a character who will play a part in the event that is the story that makes up the movie.

Then we are back to the events of the day on New Year’s Eve, and we see more of Oscar’s day leading up to the tragedy, which is preceded by going into San Francisco to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

Fruitvale Station is all story and no movie.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”