This is a deeply important movie, honestly and beautifully, told. The acting was impeccable and the score was beautiful. The story is truly powerful. Every American should see this movie. We need to understand the ugly truth of how the criminal justice system really functions in our country, and understand the heroism of the people who fight for real justice.

Based on the true story of Colin Warner who was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent more than 20 years in jail and his friend Carl King who devoted himself to prove Colin's innocence Crown Heights is a powerful film that shows how the system fails the people who need it the most. Having experience with making documentaries Matt Ruskin knows how to not make the actors be melodramatic and yet succeeds to make the viewers on the verge of tears. Lakeith Stanfield is excellent as Colin portraying the teenage confusion to the matured man. The focus of the film is mostly given to the failing judiciary and how it affects the people. There have been films dealing with such subjects before but the significance of such films has not diminished, these type of subjects are needed from time to time as a reminder about the world we live in.

A neighborhood sliced with invisible borders. A Jamaican territory and a Trinidadian one. No conflict resides among the two nationalities, but then again no aid does either. An urban island ran on testimony and intimidation. A 15-year-old's lie spurns a cyclone that tears a son from a mother, a brother from a brother, and innocent man from a few decades of freedom.Law enforcement has an unreachable quota. Their presidents and governors have enlisted them in a crusade on crime. This holy war equips its soldiers with blinders and psychological torture. Truth becomes relative, and black faces become potentials. Colin is a victim of this indiscriminate reaping.Walking home with a newly patched up television for his ma, his trajectory shoves sideways. A day meant to restore a brief rupture with his mother turns into an incriminating sinkhole. A cheek pressed to a private Cadillac and wrists wrapped in metallic hoops, circular and compete. Fear of violence begets organized violence. Violence from uniforms and ties. Assaults on innocent characters and prison beatings from extended calls home. Cruelty becomes normalized, and a morality of unwarranted suppression gains political popularity. Times are sure to change, but only gradually and with the help of tortured souls. People who abandon all comforts of freedom in hopes of acquitting prisoners who rest in cells. Their bars are fashioned out of lies, and pleas fall of deaf ears just because someone's words were "convincing enough" a few dozen years ago.The twirling of clocks begins to laugh. Manically chirping a lamentation detailing the harsh ways of chance. A photo, an index finger, and a terrified foreigner, these are the elements of a stolen life. But they are not. Government agendas, police aggression, and entropy are the real executioners. Freedom is expendable to the underrepresented.

Movies have many techniques for keeping you interested and making the time go fast. A moving camera, attractive sets and actors speaking witty lines, and a pleasing score will make the 90 minutes or so of a movie fly. Contrariwise, when a moviemaker wishes to instill a sense of oppression, any of these elements can be left out. This is a movie based on a real event. In 1980, a black man in that troubled Brooklyn neighborhood was found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to 15-to-life as the driver in a drive-by shooting. The trouble is, he didn't do it; he was busy stealing and running over someone else at the time.This movie recounts the twenty-one-year struggle by him and his brother to get him freed. And during the period of his incarceration, the deadening effect of that imprisonment is made apparent by leaving out all those techniques that would serve to make the lives of the people in this movie more interesting.The trouble is that the audience is also subject to this oppressive and boring tedium. As a result, this 94-minute feature, which might have made an excellent documentary, fails in the first duty of any piece of art: to engage and, yes, entertain its audience. All we learn is that people make mistakes and take a long time to figure things out.