American Son

 

Kenny Leon's 2019 film adaptation of Christopher Demos-Brown's celebrated Broadway play American Son, which he also directed, is chilling and unnerving for good and ill.

Kerry Washington stars opposite Steven Pasquale as the Florida parents of 18-year-old Jamal, who did not return home after a night out as he customarily did. Washington, whose performance as mother Kendra delivers much of the anguish in the story, is frustrated not just by her son's absence but by the reticence of police officers, primarily junior Officer Larking (Jeremy Jordan), to share information with her until community liaison Lt. Stokes (Eugene Lee) arrives for his shift.

When estranged husband Scott, who is an FBI agent, arrives, Larkin is immediately much more deferential, not knowing the white man is Jamal's father, and tells him Jamal was involved in a incident with a police office during a traffic stop. Scott presses for more information about the whereabouts of Jamal, a star student heading to West Point, and Kendra continues to fume and attack. While they wait for Stokes, the couple alternately turn on each other, their interracial marriage, the police, hip hop culture, BLM, absent fatherhood, racial politics and other highly charged targets.

All of the acting is top-drawer and the production retains the single-set theatrical staging, which is fine on the level of art but is distancing because the the intimacy of film is not used to bring us uncomfortably close to the anguish of the parents of a Black teen on the streets.

Leon and Brown have created a trenchant, but not altogether successful, exploration of race and identity, cultural codes, prejudice and presumption. They pose important questions but leave the characters, especially Kendra, mired in distrust and confusion. There is anger and release and horrible resolution but no satisfying growth. Just coldness and pain, lots of pain.

American Son is streaming on Netflix.