Sergio Chillón Carmona

The movie has a powerful and compelling message, and watching it right now after what is going on in the United States with BLM makes it an even more powerful watch. One can connect with the characters on an emotional level with the struggle and fear that African Americans experience, and how the value place on their lives in our country is so low. Everyone can relate to wanting to protect their children, family members and friends- regardless of race, and for African Americans we know that this is much harder . The movie sheds light on the injustice and reality of what police officers do to African-Amerians/Black people . However, besides the movie's message, I felt that the plot lacked depth and that many of the scenes were what I would describe as "juvenile" and unrealistic. Portraying white teenagers at a high school referring to themselves as "black" and saying "this is the struggle for our people" to Starr seemed ridiculous. Yes Urban Culture has popularity across the board across social classes and races, and I understand the point the movie was trying to make: that people copy African American urban culture but then mistreat them. However, upper class white people rarely copy this culture. I found Starr's way of addressing her classmates to be something that one would see in a PG movie, I don't feel that her words were aggressive enough and I felt that she let too much slide. I would have liked to see more depth around the death of Khalil and the court case and investigations that followed. I felt that the directors and producers wanted to provide a lot of entertainment and fit a lot in in 2 hours. There were several scenes regarding police violence, in my opinion it would have been more powerful and it would have been better to focus on 2 incidents (including what happen to Khalil). Portraying so many altercations detracted from the movie's quality and depth in my opinion. I also found a lot of the acting to be poor. Nevertheless, the movie's message is powerful and overshadows it's flaws. However, from an analytical perspective I felt that the movie could have been much better and that it lacked depth. Yes it's important to show scenes that exemplify police violence, but when these scenes continue one after another the movie turns more into an action type of movie. I liked the film, but it could have been something that is on lifetime. I don't think it did justice to the book.

I really enjoyed the film. Joaquin's performance is outstanding. The Joker will make you laugh, scream, close your eyes and want to cry. It's an iconic movie. I give it a 4/5 .