JUSTICE DENIED
Uncomfortable new Central Park 5 series
Everything about “When They See Us” seems designed to keep you off balance, make you uncomfortable.
The dark, heartbreaking story about the Central Park Five, created, written and directed by Ava DuVernay (“Selma,” “A Wrinkle in Time”) is shot at odd angles, in the shadows and tight zooms. It’s too loud at times and too quiet at others.
We know the story, about the fateful April 19, 1989, night during which 28-yearold Trisha Meili was beaten, raped and left for dead in Central Park, and about the five boys, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise and Antron McCray, who were blamed, convicted and then exonerated for the crime.
But still, DuVernay’s fictionalized version of events in “When They See Us” contains surprises.
The four-part series opens in the spring and spans 25 years, covering the attack, arrests and trial in distressing detail. You watch overzealous detectives bully the boys, played by Marquis Rodriguez, Ethan Herisse, Asante Blackk, Jharrel Jerome and Caleel Harris, into confessing to crimes or pointing fingers at each other. You watch confused parents try to figure out where their sons are, how they got there and how to take them home. You watch five lives ruined over the course of a few days.
“This story was a story among hundreds that were a life lesson for me,” Jerome, the 21-year-old standout star who plays Wise both as a child and an adult, told the Daily News; the other four were replaced with older actors for the second half of the series.
“My mom, growing up with a New York mentality, it was, ‘When you see cops, be polite. Stay out of the park at night.”
At a quicker pace, “When They See Us” joins the five behind bars, where all are struggling, some more than others. You move through parole hearings and releases, and through Wise’s disappearance into a broken system that punished the just-turned 16-year-old as an adult. You see convicted serial rapist and murderer Matias Reyes, already spending life in prison, confess to the attack on Meili in 2002, 13 years too late. You see the five exonerated. “I just believed, if you didn’t do it, then you shouldn’t go to jail. That’s the connection I made in my head,” Harris, who plays young Anton McCray, told The News. “But unfortunately, in the world we live in, especially if you’re black or brown, you can go to jail even if you didn’t do it.”
In DuVernay’s creative retelling, Santana, Salaam, Richardson, Wise and McCray are completely innocent. They are victims who were railroaded by prosecutor Linda Fairstein (Felicity Huffman) and NYPD detectives only interested in blaming someone, anyone, for the attack. They are victims of a system that saw dozens of young men of color, out together in Central Park after dark, as one wolf pack.
Last year, after the city released the first of thousands of documents — recordings, notes, photographs and memos — from the case, NYPD Detective Rob Mooney, who had interrogated Reyes after his confession, told The News that he still believes that he was lying about being alone during the rape, but that Manhattan prosecutor Nancy Ryan (played by Famke Janssen in the series) stepped in before Reyes confessed completely. Others believe the teens should have been exonerated for the rape, but not other beatings and muggings that occurred that night — details that DuVernay glosses over.
“When They See Us,” though, is black and white. More important than the facts is the idea that the facts no long matter.
“The climate that we live in, when you see someone being led off in handcuffs, if they’re black or brown, they are guilty of something,” Niecy Nash, who plays Korey’s mother Delores, told The News. “We live in a climate where they are not offered the benefit of the doubt.”
Where the media and the trials grouped the boys as one, “When They See Us” takes care to focus on the individuals, on little moments that remind you that the five are each their own. DuVernay and cinematographer Bradford Young, doing the best work of his and maybe anyone’s career, zooms in on baby-faced Kevin (Blackk), his eye black and blue from a police officer’s helmet. You hear Raymond’s (Rodriguez) almost daily calls to his father (John Leguizamo) from prison and watch Korey beg his mother to visit more, even though she can’t afford it.
By choosing to cast the tale as she does, DuVernay has left no room for compromise and skimmed past some facts. There are victims and there are abusers. There is justice and there is the police. There are the boys and there is the rest of the world.
“When They See Us” drops on Netflix Friday.