Mark Reviews Movies: MONSTER (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 7, 2021

The story of Monster, told in a back-and-forth narrative, seems to be reflecting the notion of the presumption of innocence. That's not a metaphor in this tale, either, since it deals directly with a court case. Our teenaged protagonist has been accused of participation in a robbery that resulted in murder, and according to the law, such participation would make him legally accountable for that violent death.

The whole of this story is told from the perspective of Steve Harmon (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), the teen accused of participating in the fatal robbery and an aspiring filmmaker. Screenwriters Janece Shaffer and Colen C. Wiley (adapting Walter Dean Myers' novel of the same title) take their cues from the protagonist, who imagines the story of the events leading up to the robbery and his life during that time in general as a screenplay for a movie. We believe the kid, because we really have no other choice.

He wasn't there when the violent crime occurred, so there's no record of his presence in or near the bodega at the time of the robbery. A witness says she saw him outside the store before it took place, and perhaps, she believes, the teen was making some kind of signal to unseen people. Steve asserts his innocence, and the story he's writing as a script only deals with his family life, his friendships and acquaintances, his passion for making movies, and his dream of becoming a successful filmmaker one day. Even his attorney, a skeptical public defender named Katherine O'Brien (Jennifer Ehle) who's at a point in her career that she's only doing the job, comes to believe in and fight for Steve's innocence.

We are, of course, getting quite a bit ahead of ourselves with the suggestions and the subtext of the loaded stakes and one-sided perspective that the screenwriters and director Anthony Mandler establish here. To talk about the circumstances any more might be to give away the story's final answer as to Steve's guilt or innocence, but the point is that the movie doesn't even present it as a question.

It quietly, subtly serves as an argument for that most tricky of legal requirements: that any person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. There's a lot of prejudicial weight that comes with seeing a person in handcuffs, in jail, and in a courtroom. As several characters point out as the story unfolds, that weight is increased, simply because Steve happens to be Black. This movie wants to shed all of those biases and assumptions—to see Steve as a person, before and even after he has been accused of this crime, and not, as the lead prosecutor (played by Paul Ben-Victor) declares the teen, as a "monster."

It makes the case, for sure, although there's a certain shallowness to the depiction of Steve's life outside of the courtroom that doesn't quite make for involving drama. We see him with his parents, as his mother (played by Jennifer Hudson) jokes with him and his father (played by Jeffrey Wright) speaks with him as both a dad and a fellow artist, and his younger brother (played by Nyleek Moore), who looks up to Steve. We see him making movies on the street and in the school's film club with his teacher (played by Tim Blake Nelson), who shows the class a pretty on-the-nose classic about truth and perspectives (allowing Steve to have a little monologue about the subject). We see him start a little romance with a classmate (played by Lovie Simone), which pauses, due to Steve's arrest, before it makes any kind of impact.

Most of the flashbacks here are dedicated to Steve's connection to William King (Rakim "ASAP Rocky" Mayers), the young man accused of and seen on camera shooting the store clerk. That's why, despite the filmmakers obvious intentions, so much of Steve's story ultimately feels, less like a depiction of an ordinary life interrupted, and more about the mystery of what Steve did or didn't do on that particular day, at that store, and, especially, in those minutes before a robbery turned deadly. It's counterproductive.

This is, first and foremost, a courtroom drama, which is occasionally involving in terms of plotting (since the details of what happened are kept intentionally vague) and also filled with the usual theatrics of jurisprudence (lots of speeches, lots of objections, and a lot of argumentations, with little sense of realism). Witnesses piece together the crime and the circumstances leading up to it. Steve's lawyer picks apart any testimony against her client, and when Steve eventually takes the stand, the prosecutor's questions seem tailored to keeping Steve's role in the robbery or his lack thereof as an ongoing mystery.

None of it—the depiction of Steve's personal life or the courtroom melodrama—is especially convincing, although the goal of juxtaposing the real person against the assumptions of seeing him in court is admirable. That is until Monster makes its final point, which basically undoes every other point the movie has attempted to make.

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