Synopsis
Time passes and tension mounts in a Florida police station as an estranged interracial couple awaits news of their missing teenage son.
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Cast
- Kerry WashingtonKendra Ellis-Connor
- Steven PasqualeScott Connor
- Jeremy JordanOfficer Paul Larkin
- Eugene LeeLieutenant John Stokes
Recommendations
- 60
The Hollywood Reporter
Any failure to expand into cinema's possibilities is overshadowed by the uniformly strong performances in a four-person cast led by an excellent Kerry Washington. - 50
Movie Nation
American Son never quite lapses into terrible, but as with a play that needs another week of out of town tryouts, it “never gets on its feet,” either. - 40
Variety
The overly finished language and theatrical intensity levels that might be potently effective onstage lose any pretense of naturalism under the camera’s unblinking gaze. - 40
The New York Times
At some point you’re tempted to stop following the narrative and start keeping score between husband and wife. It’s a good debate. It just isn’t much of a movie. - 38
RogerEbert.com
All these “what incredible irony!” moments are designed to…well, I’m not quite sure. The movie’s final line, an appropriation of the dying words of a black man killed by police, is an exploitative and cheap reversal that legitimately addresses precisely nothing. - 25
IndieWire
Perhaps writer Demos-Brown and director Kenny Leon hope to tap into our collective consciences, but it’s difficult to be moved by such hackneyed, all-too convenient storytelling and overwrought sentimentality. - 20
The Guardian
It’s a deafening misfire, like the most unbearable, unwatchable daytime TV soap filled with the most awful self-conscious hamminess, parodic emoting and pointless shouting-at-each-other acting.
