(
ThyBlackMan.com) Good courtroom dramas keep audiences hooked into a defendant’s fight for justice. The simpler the fight, the better. Just saying.
Screenwriters Janece Shaffer and Colen C. Wiley took their cues from the young adult novel
Monster, which was written in 1999 by Walter Dean Myers. He was an author who wrote over 100 children/YA books during his 45-year-old career. Raised in Harlem he was greatly affected by his urban upbringing and many of his stories reflected on inner city life and the challenges he faced as a young
Black man. That’s the core of the plotline for this film, when it’s not obscured.
Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer Monster, a courtroom drama starring Kelvin Harrison Jr., Jeffrey Wright, Jennifer Hudson and Jennifer Ehle that s premiering Friday on Netflix isn t actually new at all.
Yes, it s adapted from an acclaimed book by the trailblazing author Walter Dean Myers about a Black teen who is in prison for the possible murder of a Harlem drugstore owner. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2018 and has been sitting on various shelves since. It was acquired by one company, re-titled and planned for a fall 2019 release. But that didn t pan out and then late last year Netflix swept in and took it.
Monster cast buoys Netflix crime drama that doesn t quite meet moment
Monster.
Photo by Anna Kooris/Netflix The reckoning over how Black people, and especially Black men, are too often regarded as threats by police and the public at large has been a long time coming. While there are examples of films confronting the issue going back decades, recent years have seen a notable uptick of filmmakers trying to illuminate something that has remained in the dark for much too long. The latest film to do so is
Monster, which centers on Steve Harmon (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), a clean-cut kid with a passion for filmmaking who happens to live in a not-so-good neighborhood in New York City. As the film begins, Steve is in jail for what we soon learn is being an accomplice to the murder of a convenience store clerk, a crime committed by neighborhood acquaintances Richard “Bobo” Evans (John David Washington) and William King (Rakim Mayers, aka ASAP Rocky) while trying to rob the store.
MOVIE REVIEW by Richard Roeper MONSTER Three stars Steve ..... Kelvin Harrison Jr. Mrs. Harmon ... Jennifer Hudson Mr. Harmon .. Jeffrey Wright Bobo .... John David Washington
Netflix presents a film directed by Anthony Mandler and written by Radha Blank, Colen C. Wiley and Janece Shaffer. Rated R (for language throughout, some violence and bloody images). Running time: 99 minutes. Available now on Netflix.
For 18 years, everything has been going Steve s way. He s a smart and warmhearted young man with wonderful parents, terrific friends, fantastic teachers and a future so bright he really does have to wear shades.
And then, in the span of maybe five minutes, it all falls apart. There s a man lying dead on the floor of his own store, and Steve is accused of being part of the chain of events that led to this tragedy. Now it s up to the courts and a jury to decide his fate.