Adapted from the 1999 book by Walter Dean Myers, the film marks the feature debut of music video director Anthony Mandler, from a script by a trio of writers, among them Radha Blank, who made her directing debut last year with another Netflix acquisition, “The Forty-Year-Old Version.”
Betraying the project’s indie-film roots, the movie’s structure basically resembles an extra-long episode of a courtroom TV drama, fleshed out by unfolding via flashbacks from the perspective of the accused — in this case, Harrison’s Steve Harmon, a 17-year-old Black honor student charged with aiding a robbery that resulted in the death of a Harlem bodega owner.
The narrative relies on Steve’s narration, getting inside his head while in jail, at a moment that threatens to derail his life and all the hopes and dreams that his stunned parents (Jeffrey Wright and Jennifer Hudson) have invested in him. To that point, the HBO miniseries “The Night Of” comes to mind.
The question of what really happened, however, is more complicated than just the cops nabbing the wrong kid, since Steve did know the other suspect, James (Rakim Mayers, aka A$AP Rocky), an older street character who offers Steve the kind of inspiration that might serve his goal of becoming a filmmaker.
The problem, in the way the movie is constructed, stems from a lack of clarity about the evidence, making the police’s interest in Steve seem particularly arbitrary. Nor is that situation helped by launching so quickly into the trial, which makes the film feel a little too “Law & Order”-ish for its own good.
Although the book is two decades old, “Monster” possesses a ripped-from-the-headlines quality in its look at how African American teens and young men are labeled (hence the title) and dehumanized by the justice system. Steve’s attorney (Jennifer Ehle) tells the prosecutor that her client is “not who you think he is,” but warns Steve that the jury will see him as guilty because “You’re young, you’re Black and you’re on trial.”
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