‘When They See Us’: Ava DuVernay’s Central Park Five Story Is A Harrowing Tale Of American Injustice, Racism, Sorrow & Pain [Review]

From the first clapping boom bap beats of Special Ed and then Public Enemy (“Fight The Power”), director Ava DuVernay‘s four-part Netflix mini-series “When They See Us” surges with a propulsive urgency and harrowing sense of rage, indignation, and heartache that rarely breaks. The series is centered on the infamous Central Park Five case, one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980s, in which five black and Latino teenage boys were wrongly convicted and sent to prison for the alleged gang rape of a white female jogger. DuVernay’s dramatization of the story is deeply empathetic, humanizing and enraging. “When They See Us” is also dense, expansive, procedural and perhaps at odds with itself, attempting to tell a very human and even personal story about the traumatic experience of five innocent kids scapegoated by the system while acting as a scorching indictment of the system itself.

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Electrically charged, something of an “unfinished business” spiritual cousin to her searing documentary “The 13^th“ about the flawed American prison system and the intersection of race, injustice, and mass incarceration that it sharply examined, “When They See Us” takes on almost more than it can chew. Sprawling in shape and scope, it buckles slightly and falters, loses emotional poignancy from the shifting of stories, narratives and focus. But DuVernay’s latest is still a thoughtfully crafted, emotionally shattering work.

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“Wilding,” or “wilding out” the slang term used by black teens in 1980s New York for hanging out and goofing off—boys being boys—is referenced often and embodies the rancid cultural schism that divides New York. Wilding is just fucking around in the park, but to New York City police, detectives, prosecutors, and legislators, it’s a sinister term rooted in fear and bigotry toward black and brown men and god knows what they do at night and who they may prey on. It’s a small, but crucial element of the series wherein DuVernay quietly posits her central thesis: that different standards apply to different people and while white boys can be boys, can hang out, roughhouse and get into a little trouble, for the five unfortunate black and Latino boys of “When They See Us,” caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, it’s a veritable death sentence. What is essentially unlawful assembly and delinquency is soon warped and distorted into a vicious rape and assault thanks to the machination of the NYPD and the domino effect of crusading Manhattan assistant district attorney Linda Fairstein, head of the sex crimes unit (Felicity Huffman, never more poised and ready to play a privileged white villain thanks to her college admissions scandal).

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When these five random boys from Harlem—Antron McCray (Caleel Harris), Yusef Salaam (Ethan Herisse), Korey Wise (Jharrel Jerome), Raymond Santana (Marquis Rodriguez) and Kevin Richardson (Asante Blackk)—are detained for fooling around in Central Park, their lives are forever changed. Where one prosecutor (Famke Janssen) sees the discrepancies and the tenuous connections about the rape and group of boys, Fairstein sees an opportunity. With the media and city raging for justice, she convinces the District Attorney to let her proceed with an investigation that soon goes off the rails of any moral and ethical standards.

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Given their orders, NYPD detectives aggressively abuse their powers, steamrolling over these terrified kids with intimidation and abusive tactics, violently interrogating the boys for hours on end without food and without parental supervision (unlawful for the mostly underage boys) eventually and quickly coercing and manipulating them into confessions under the falsehood that they’ll get to go home to their families.

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During this relentless assault, even parents that are eventually present (Michael K. Williams, John Leguizamo, Marsha Stephanie Blake) roll over and are manipulated into believing the NYPD’s lies, believing if they “cooperate,” their children will be spared. With confessions locked in, the D.A.s office, including chief prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer (a morally conflicted Vera Farmiga), strike while the iron is hot and while the media mob is seething outside, while people like then-private citizen Donald Trump are taking out $85,000 ads in the New York Times calling for the return of the death penalty against these boys. Blood is in the water and the sharks are circling.

If this unscrupulous miscarriage of justice sounds enraging, it is. “When They See Us” swiftly moves from a blistering crime procedural to an appalling courthouse drama, to a distressing prison drama and sometimes back and forth as two separate trials occur for two groups of boys.

DuVernay’s rhythm may make you reach for the pause, even rewind button; it’s as if she’s waited her entire life to tell this story and it’s condensed, but distended—there’s so much story to tell!—bursting at the seams with exasperation, heartbreak and a determination that screams out to tell this tale. Conversely, DuVernay’s series may be inherently passionate, but it’s also poised, solemn and never sentimental nor capital A angry. The inherent rage at these injustices is quiet, simmering, but ultimately more heartbroken for what these boys suffered and the childhoods they were robbed of. Moreover, the eyes are constantly on the prize, and no sense of rage will derail her sharp vision.

Co-written by DuVernay and collaborators like Robin Swicord (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button“) Attica Locke (“Empire“), Yusuf Hassan and Michael Starrbury, a sense of honoring these boys and doing justice to their story weighs heavy on the breadth of this immense series; not much appears to be invented, most characters aren’t playing composites for the sake of efficiency or clarity. Super detailed and fact-driven, the extensive cast includes the adult versions of the boys, Justin Cunningham, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk and Freddy Miyares and nearly feels overwhelming.

The central difficulty of “When They See Us,” if one can call it that, is finding the balance between the personal and the political. Instead of, say, chaptering the story into six chapters—an introduction and then a story for each of the boys—DuVernay and her writers tackle a specific criminal justice system element and theme and reverse engineer the teenagers’ story into it. So, after the dehumanizing interrogations and stripping of rights, chapter two focuses in on the court and pay-to-not-play bail system, and the following chapters center on the horrors of juvenile detention, the prison system, and then finally, the distressing anguish of post-incarceration and how the deck is firmly stacked against anyone who has spent time in prison.

Without getting too preachy or didactic, DuVernay weaves these institutional, systemic elements into the human story and it’s an intelligent mosaic. But it’s almost too smart for its own good. Sometimes you wish the narrative didn’t bounce around so much, the system wasn’t on trial and the story of five boys robbed of their youth was the focus. The reality is, the filmmaker clearly feels a responsibility to tell this story holistically, and she’s ultimately not wrong.

“When They See Us” is a bruising, profound and incisive epic, even when the burden of story and responsibility is too much to bear and when the series feels too hard to watch. Performances are outstanding across the board, (special mention for Niecy Nash and Aunjanue Ellis), the visual aesthetic perfectly unglamorous and grounded (DP Bradford Young‘s work is as crisp and breathtaking as ever) and the musical choices (including Kris Bowers‘ moving score) are first-rate.

Ultimately, DuVernay’s poignant and painful Netflix series is a towering, if overflowing, statement about race and America, and how those who are perceived as other are seen and what privileges and rights they are not afforded. The dark, sad causticness of “feeling so seen,” which DuVernay alludes to in her title, is the cruel, inherently bigoted and merciless opposite; when you are mistaken for a brutish violent criminal, perceived and judged by privileged oppressors who fear you and may never understand your worth. [B+/A-]