Film Review: Monsters and Men

"Cities Are Gonna Keep Burning. Kids Are Gonna Keep Getting Shot. And Cops Are Gonna Keep Getting Off..."

With the Academy Award nominations now released into the steely glances of the general public, the success and critical admiration of Spike Lee's excellent BlackKklansman seems to have resulted in succession of interesting, ideas based political dramas with a key central narrative regarding the impact of race relations across contemporary American society. Joined together at the hip by rising star, John David Washington, Monsters and Men, the big screen debut from American filmmaker, Reinaldo Marcus Green, follows a very familiar path to Lee's 2018 drama by focusing on a increasingly topical discussion and confronting it upon the big screen. With a core central narrative which immediately brings to mind last year's The Hate U Give, Green's movie follows three different perspectives following the shooting of an unarmed black male on the streets of downtown New York. Loosely inspired by the death of Eric Garner back in 2014, a cigarette seller who resisted arrest and subsequently died within a police officer's chokehold, all of which was filmed by an onlooker on his mobile phone, Monsters and Men is an interesting, very well made and thought-provoking drama with a trio of excellent and thoroughly convincing central performances. 

Following a very similar narrative pathway to to Barry Jenkins' outstanding 2017 drama, Moonlight, Monsters and Men follows three very different male characters who are each bound together by a crippling desire for change in a society which makes such drastic decisions either increasingly difficult or incredibly dangerous. Beginning with Anthony Ramos' (A Star is Born) street savvy, Manny, the film benefits from taking the time to develop each leading character whilst the background noise of the underlying central message boils from underneath, and with an opening thirty minutes which ends with Manny's role in the film's key set piece, the transition from Ramos to Washington (BlackKklansman) is expertly done and exhibits a craft of filmmaking not many big screen debutants would be able to pull off. With the introduction of Washington as Dennis, a observant and dedicated local Police Officer, it is undoubtedly his portion of the film which manages to emit the highest degree of drama, with his conflicted nature as an officer of the law binding him to a make a final decision regarding his position as a black man in a predominantly white geographical area which is both difficult and understandable from the point of view of the audience. With two standout scenes from Washington's own act including an emotional and iconic basketball scene and a dinner discussion regarding the politics of policing, it does comes as a slight shame that the final act involving Kelvin Harrison Jr.'s (It Comes at Night) Zee is rather quite plodding and at times, particularly dull, but with a dedication to the screenplay from each of the three leading actors and a well handled sense of preachiness which failed to annoy or disturb the drama, Monsters and Men is a ideas ridden cinematic debut from a filmmaker with obvious raw and exciting talent.  

Overall Score: 7/10