An estranged couple reunites in a Florida police station to help find their missing teenage son.
American Son is a Netflix Original film directed by Kenny Leon, and starring Kerry Washington, Steven Pasquale, Jeremy Jordan, and Eugene Lee, based on a Broadway play of the same name, also directed by Kenny Leon, and starring Kerry Washington, Steven Pasquale, Jeremy Jordan, and Eugene Lee. Notice the similarities? I was actually hesitant to refer to it as a Netflix Original, but as Netflix funded the film adaptation, I'll let it slide.
The film is literally a recording of a broadway play (minus the audience) with cinematography and a larger budget for set design. As it involves the exact same cast and director as the Broadway play, one would expect the acting to already be top-notch, with most of the budget and effort going into improving the visual aspect of the production. To an extent, that is what happened.
In theatrical productions, you are performing to a physical audience some distance away, and thus, your gestures and facial expressions are over-exaggerated compared to cinematic films. That physical distance also leads to the performers needing to have strong, loud, and clear enunciation at all times. It is these performance elements that make a great theatrical show, but a less-than engaging cinematic flick. Thanks to the use of multiple microphones and sound recording equipment, a variety of cameras, and the ability to do multiple takes, cinema has ability to show greater subtlety in dialogue, facial expressions, and body movements.
American Son lacks that subtlety. There are a veritable plethora of available emotions to convey on screen, especially when the cinematographer (Kramer Morgenthau) utilizes tight close-ups of our main character Kendra (Kerry Washington) so often. Washington has a good 80% of the dialogue and screentime, and yet the only emotions we see from this woman concerned about her missing son, are impatience, aggression, rage, loathing, and obnoxiousness. Very little in the way of quiet fear, or submissiveness.
Every conversation leads to yelling, everything constantly escalating, and while it can make for some pretty accurate portrayals of what irrational behaviour you can expect from an American mother scared of losing her black son, this constant barrage of nitpicking and racial triggers does nothing but create irritation and annoyance in the audience.
Story-wise, the four characters cover the four main categories in this situation. For the sake of simplicity, let's categorise them as the white parent, black parent, white cop, and black cop. Each has a different perspective, and they are portrayed well in the film. What isn't portrayed so well, is the rest of the character development. Conversations go off on a tangent at the flip of a switch, and calm discussions turn into yelling and screaming, or vice versa. Any conversation that does not relate to the missing son, Jamal, feels out of place and forced.
The cinematography does a reasonable job at keeping everything visually interesting considering 99% of the film occurs within one single restrictive location. This does require a good balance as too much camera movement distracts from the character actions, reducing the impact of the dialogue somewhat. Morgenthau does a satisfactory job in that respect, making the most of a limited environment.
Thematically, American Son wants the audience to contemplate the different perspectives of police interactions with the public. That understanding that a police officer puts their life on the line every time they put on the uniform, or pull someone over. That understanding that it is unethical to judge someone by the colour of their skin. That understanding that no matter how tolerant the world is, there will always be stereotypes based on skin colour, hairstyles, clothing, music choices, vehicle choices and condition, even time of day and location, and police officers will use them to assess a threat level to best ensure that they make it home alive at the end of the day. And that understanding that sometimes they may be wrong, and sometimes they may be right.
How much is it our responsibility to look as non-threatening as possible when interacting with police? American Son wants you to think about that, but it never gives you a quiet moment to contemplate it. Instead, it agitates and irritates you with accidental racism, opinionated pushiness, and an inability to converse without raising their voices. It definitely gets you riled up, but for all the wrong reasons.