American Son is based on Christopher Demos-Brown’s Broadway play by the same name, which opened during the winter 2018 season. Kenny Leon, who directed the play, returns for the film, as does the entire cast; in addition to Washington and Pasquale, Jeremy Jordan and Eugene Lee also star in the movie. The result is less compelling for what it is than for what it suggests about the type of programming Netflix might be experimenting with. American Son doesn’t really work as a movie. Its theatricality comes across as forced and curiously inert on screen, at close range to the actors, and its conversations about race and policing in particular feel stilted and contrived – like pontifications snatched from national conversations and simply repeated by the characters, rather than expressions of what they deeply feel and think. But the staging, which feels like it’s for a play rather than a movie, points toward something interesting. Virtually, the entire story takes place in one precinct’s waiting room, and the effect is that it feels more like we’re watching a play than a movie. But American Son is a straight play. It’s not a filmed version of the play as it is performed on a stage; instead, it’s somewhere between a play and a movie. Watching it, you can imagine a world in which new plays and revivals that achieve major stage productions find a broader audience through Netflix and other streaming platforms, creating space for new writers, directors, and actors to be seen and heard outside the more insular theater environment fostered in New York and a handful of other cities. The ending definitely packs an emotional punch, but Netflix might have been better served shooting the original stage play during its theatre run. By adapting American Son into a film that feels flat and has next to no frills, it has sucked any energy from the story.

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