Jack and I thoroughly enjoyed this story of a man, days from the end of probation, who witnesses a heinous police shooting and is tempted in other ways to jeopardize his freedom. Like Green Book, it's a drama about a serious subject with plenty of humor. We need a new term because dramedy is too light for this content.
Daveed Diggs (original cast of Hamilton, ten episodes of The Get Down, three of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, ten of Black-ish, and a rap song in Zootopia) and his lifelong friend Rafael Casal (new to me) wrote the script and star as Collin the felon and Miles his lifelong friend and loose cannon. The cast includes Janina Gavankar (her face is familiar because we saw all 38 episodes of The Mysteries of Laura) as Collin's ex-girlfriend and employer Val and Jasmine Cephas Jones (real life girlfriend of Anthony Ramos, Diggs' Hamilton castmate, and daughter of Ron Cephas Jones who plays Randall's father on This Is Us) as Miles' wife Ashley.
This is the second feature for director Carlos López Estrada. The movie was nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Diggs is nominated for Best Male Lead at the Spirit Awards.
Diggs and Casal are proud Oakland natives and the location shots are spectacular.
The movie has many many songs (here's a list) in addition to a score by Michael Yezerski (he's worked on over a hundred projects, none of which I've seen). There are clips of his work on his website. I think I liked the music but it's been two weeks since we saw it.
We streamed this on iTunes, in part because of Diggs' Spirit award nomination and more because of his interview on WTF with Marc Maron. Rotten Tomatoes' critics' average of 93% and its audiences' of 86 should lead you to watch it as well.
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