An African-American man gets into a confrontation, seemingly due to being stereotyped for his race. Violence ensues and he is killed; the killer insists he acted in self-defence, but the facts suggest otherwise.
A narrative that could refer to countless specific stories, it’s a sadly familiar trope of American society wherein racial violence, whether effected by police or individuals, has in recent times incited some of the most incendiary and heartfelt protests – in Ferguson after the shooting of Michael Brown; in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray and in cities across the country after the deaths of Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin – that the country has seen in years.
Marc Silver’s (Who is Dayani Crystal?) doc is an investigation into one particular case; that of Jordan Davis, shot and killed at a Florida gas station by Michael Dunn, a middle-aged white man who fired 10 bullets into the unarmed Davis’s car following an argument about the rap music he and his friends were playing.
But it is also a timely cipher for the weight of all the other stories that have riven America by continually showing how racial prejudice, whether conscious or unconscious, so often results in paranoia and violence and subsequently in tragedy for African-American families who are desperate for justice for their lost loved ones, but rarely get it.
