Another story of “the wrong man” shines a bright light.
There’s a real danger in telling a true story: The ending is already known, and the road to get there has already been laid. Crown Heights takes this challenge and overcomes all of it to paint a portrait of a desperate man with the most valiant of friends.
In 1980, Colin Warner (Lakeith Stanfield) was arrested and accused of murder. Despite the fact that he neither knew the victim nor was near the scene of the crime, he spent the next 21 years of his life in jail.
The story starts, as these kinds of stories often do, with police eager for a suspect and suspect of any exonerations. From the beginning, Warner’s friend Carl ‘KC’ King (Nnamdi Asomugha) is there for emotional and material support. Despite being informed of Warner’s innocence, the cops rope him into the investigation, eventually naming him the driver and a co-conspirator for the murder.
Two years later he’s convicted and the long road to appeal begins. While Warner tries to get used to life inside, KC keeps fighting for him on the outside. Eventually, another supporter comes on the scene, Antoinette (Natalie Paul) an old acquaintance of Warner’s. The two fall in love and eventually marry.
Even with the outcome assured, director Matt Ruskin manages to wring every bit of humanity out of an inhumane situation. Warner reacts to every humiliating situation like an innocent man should, with a double-dose of anger and resentment.
More than anything, Crown Heights is a meditation on time. Not just the long years that pass by, though those are used to great effect as politicians of every era, from Reagan to Clinton, appear on screen getting “tough on crime.” It’s also the small moments, the flow by too quickly for a man in no hurry. One particular incident in which an over-aggressive correctional officer makes Warner get off the phone with his grandmother results in sizable repercussions beyond the violence that too often follows many actions in prison.
Those recurring politicians tell their own tale. We as a country have been quick to shout for “law and order” at the expense of the real people caught in the justice system. Crown Heights makes it impossible to ignore the lives at the center of this drama.
After what seems like forever, the audience gets to celebrate the eventual release. It’s a welcome sense of relief after steady dose of unfair and unbalanced. The good guy, finally, wins.
