While pumping gas Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan) comes across a pit bull, an intimidating creature for many, and then starts to pet it. The dog runs out into the road and is hit by a car. Oscar yells for the car to pull over as he picks up the bleeding dog, the car continues to speed. While comforting the dog Oscar screams for help, but no one comes. He is left alone with the pit bull in his arms as it passes. This moment and other scenes in the film (although fabricated to add intricacies to the plot) show us the many layers of men and humanity.

Although Ryan Coogler (who wrote and directed “Fruitvale Station” just out of film school) does make stark and stunning statements in the film, we mainly see a day in the life of a young man who is struggling. His flaws are present and the film opens with Oscar hiding a bag of weed from his daughter and we become informed that he recently cheated on his girlfriend. Oscar is impulsive; he grabs the arm of his boss to get his job back and gets into a fight while his mother visits him in prison during a flashback scene.

What makes “Fruitvale Station” work is Coogler’s style (aside from a few scenes) he is not force feeding his audience or telling them how they should feel about the death of another black man by the hands of police. Jordan also does a tremendous job capturing Oscar’s noted charisma, he is charming and able to talk himself out of certain situations, but sometimes talk is just talk and with incarceration in his past Oscar struggles trying to live a stable life. At 22 Oscar has a daughter and a distrustful girlfriend, a circumstance few would be ready for at that age.

Circumstances that were captured on countless cellphones occur after Oscar and his girlfriend spend New Year’s Eve in San Francisco. The initial brutality of the officer’s actions is more chilling than the final fatal act itself. A young police officer (Chad Michael Murray) is perhaps the most docile of the officers, but he grabs his gun instead of his Taser. The end does not surprise us, but how it all went down does. Oscar’s death could have been avoided during countless moments on the BART platform.

Cooglar did not necessarily make this film in an effort to retrace factual events, and the questions are left for the audience to explore. The way we communicate, particularly the way law enforcement treats those it should protect needs to change, a concept so basic they are beyond our comprehension.