(spoiler free)
Anthony Mandler’s Monster tells the story of how Steve Harmon (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a 17-year old aspiring filmmaker, is falsely put on trial for the murder of Aguinaldo Nesbitt (Robert Lopez) for being affiliated with gang members James King (A$AP Rocky) and Bobo Evans (John David Washington). Harmon will try to prove his innocence in court, while the prosecution (Paul Ben-Victor) tries to paint him as a “monster” who deserves imprisonment. While it admirably tries to raise questions on racial injustice and inequality, the film’s unfocused story and ever-changing themes makes for a fairly frustrating watch that amounts to nothing particularly thought-provoking, in which its questions it desires to raise about race are either left unanswered or become stuck in a cycle of unimportance.
There’s really one main problem which Monster unfortunately bathes in: it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Whenever it focuses on Steve’s path towards innocence, it’s the only time in which the film wants to say something and does it in a compelling manner. However, most of the runtime is filled with pointless flashback sequences that don’t properly develop character and add nothing to the main story at-hand. The main focus of the film is supposed to be about Steve Harmon reclaiming his innocence inside a judicial system that is discriminatory against Black people, right? Every flashback, then, should have the purpose to complement or bring context to its focus. Whenever you have a film with a story that’s mostly told through flashbacks, you always want to make sure these complement what’s going on in the present, so the audience starts to understand why Harmon is in the position he’s in.
Mandler doesn’t want to do that and instead spends most of the film’s flashbacks with casual conversations with Harmon and his friends and/or A$AP Rocky’s King that don’t really add anything to where he’s in, in the present. In fact, during the scene in which Harmon gets arrested, the tonal shift between casual conversations and an arrest feels particularly jarring—with no previous flashback sequences having served his arrest or built any form of character growth. Instead, we spend time with Steve’s teacher (Tim Blake Nelson) giving basic advice on filmmaking (and praise Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon for some relatively unknown reason) or his parents (Jeffrey Wright and Jennifer Hudson) for more conversations on superheroes, art and other, dare I say, pointless sequences that do not serve the film’s main story. There’s no underlying arc or theme that ties all of the flashbacks together and, because of this, Monster is a very hard film to get invested in.
That being said, the film does contain excellent performances all-around, particularly with Kelvin Harrison Jr. and a small, but impactful, extended cameo from John David Washington. Harrison Jr. shines most notably during the film’s court sequences, in which he has to confront his attorney (Jennifer Ehle) on his possible sentencing. His facial expressions in the courtroom, especially the ones of anguish conveyed by his water-filled eyes, are some of the best acting I’ve seen all year. Washington also magnifies the screen during the film’s central sequence, as the witness who changes the direction of the trial. With TENET and Malcolm & Marie, Washington adds another dud to his resume, but his performance isn’t the problem yet again. He’s one of the few solid parts of the film, even though his screen time is scarcely limited here. The film is also beautifully shot by David Devlin, who imbues the same sense of visual dynamism found in Eddie Huang’s basketball pic Boogie. Both films’ visual styles are vastly similar, even if the subject matter the films treat are extremely different.
As a compelling courtroom drama, Monster could’ve worked if it focused on its main subject matter and stopped trying to mishmash a plethora of themes, if they don’t serve the main story at-hand. Even if the film contains strong performances from a star-studded cast, with commanding presences from Kelvin Harrison Jr., A$AP Rocky, John David Washington and Jeffrey Wright, the film’s presentation isn’t gripping enough for the audience to start caring about Steve Harmon’s path to innocence, as most of its questions on racial inequality never properly get answered or deepened, through what could’ve been a smart use of flashbacks. You’re better off watching Judas and the Black Messiah instead.
Written by Maxance Vincent
★★
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