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Monsters and Men

The indie triptych social drama about a police shooting is currently in theaters.

Alissa Wilkinson covers film and culture for Vox. Alissa is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics.

Metacritic score: 66

Monsters and Men is a terrific triptych with a painful central event: a police shooting of a black man. Each of the film’s three segments revolves around a different character, and the shooting touches each of their lives in different ways.

One man (Anthony Ramos) witnessed it; one is a black cop (BlacKkKlansman star John David Washington) who’s struggling to figure out how he should feel about it; and one is a rising baseball star (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) who feels a tug toward activism as a result of it.

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green seems equally interested in making a visually beautiful film and making a film with a social conscience, and his lead actors turn in sensitive, strong performances that explore how a whole community can be affected by a single devastating event.