OXFORD FILM FESTIVAL REVIEWS: David Midell's THE KILLING OF KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN is a profound telling of a veteran's unnecessary death at the hands of the police

There’s a rare breed of movie that can maintain a tenuous balance between dramatization and emotionality when it comes to covering a real life event. Over dramatize and you lose your “true story” credentials. Underwhelm and you fail to emotionally excite your audience. Both are tough outcomes and it’s rare to execute that perfect blend. That’s why I can’t sing the praises of David Midell’s The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain (which screened as part of the Oxford Film Festival’s Weekly Virtual Fest) enough.

THE KILLING OF KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN

The movie dramatizes a routine wellness check on an elderly black man in White Plains, NY. His life alert monitor accidentally goes off and what seems like a simple visit for the police officers spirals horribly out of control and into a waking nightmare that many Americans are familiar with. A very similar event occurred last year in my neighboring town of Ft. Worth so this story strikes close to home now more than ever.

There’s an instinct in humans when they watch these tragedies take place to explain what the victim did wrong. “I would’ve opened my door.” “I would have gone to the back window and talked to him.” “I would’ve….” On and on and on. While this intuition demonstrates our ability to analyze the situation from a top-down view it angers me because it shows me an audience member struggling to sympathize. That reaction is on display in full force here from watchers as they attempt to figure out how they could solve this issue themselves and prevent a needless death. This movie allows audiences the privilege of dismantling the system, but forces them to understand there’s a lot more to fix than (in this case) just three police officers making a call in the projects. Because we know how the movie will end the audience can spend the duration of the entire film questioning police tactics and understanding exactly how things escalated so quickly. Turns out something like this isn’t made up. It’s not fiction. It’s fact.

The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain gives equal heft to both sides of the equation here while ominously pointing towards it’s tragic conclusion. Movies where you know the ending have to succeed on one major beat and that is the “what if” beat. “What if that police officer had been successful in talking Kenneth down?” It’s that last grasp at hope, the last chance to make everything right, boiled down to the slimmest possible chance. One wrong word, one wrong move and it all comes crashing down. We know it’s going to fail, but we hope anyway. This movie perfectly nails that narrative beat. I sat there and prayed it would all go right and I wouldn’t have to confront the real ending. When it’s yanked away from us the loss is felt even more profoundly.

Frankie Faison as Kenneth Chamberlain (THE KILLING OF KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN)

All around great marks should be given to the performers but especially to Frankie Faison. As the titular Kenneth Chamberlain, he perfectly conveys the raw emotionality of a man in distress. He injects a drip of confusion into his lines convincing us Mr. Chamberlain was truly distressed. If you think about how they likely would’ve shot this movie it’s even more amazing to realize that Faison likely did ninety percent of his scenes alone. His talent and ability carry this movie throughout it’s entirety.

Much can be said of the actors on the other side of the door as well. Steve O’Connell plays the Sergeant in charge of this welfare check alongside the sympathetic rookie Officer Rossi (played by Enrico Natale) and aggressive Officer Jackson (Ben Marten.) All three perform together perfectly counterbalancing each other throughout the course of the film. Natale’s empathic plight directly counters Marten’s ‘take-no-shit’ attitude. While both personalities clash we watch O’Connell struggle desperately to hold on to the situation while simultaneously making a series of bad calls. I’ve often wondered how actors feel playing racists or sexists or any other kind of criminal and I always imagine it’s in service of the greater story. This story, in particular, needed to be told therefore if an actor has to play the bad guy, so be it. Marten does it viciously and with such ferocity you can see clearly how a simple wellness check escalated into a full on siege.

Trying to prevent the siege. (THE KILLING OF KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN)

Siege movies are tricky. They rely on a certain back-and-forth between both sides of the siege. They can run out of gas or stretch on for too long. This movie doesn’t skip a beat. It’s clever and impressive to see a real-life situation make the transition into the siege movie it ultimately becomes. The ante-upping through each subsequent part helps escalate the drama as well as the tension in us as viewers. We can’t help but worry. One side gains the advantage, then the other side regains their ground. The back-and-forth of it all works perfectly in the film because it’s framed within the context of police procedure. The cops try everything they can before they call in a response team. They have to. When they think all their options are used they have to make a call that will, inevitably, make things worse.

I’m harping on this ability to maintain tension because it’s so important to this film. This event actually happened. While we can’t know how many liberties the director, Middell, took to dramatize this story, we can understand HOW a situation like this would spiral out of control. Middell focuses on that idea and trains his camera on it. With the shakycam style of shooting we feel like a fly on the wall and this feels much less like a reenactment and much more like a true event. It adds dramatic punch to every scene with messy zooms and whip pans. It’s never overdone either as the only nausea I felt was caused strictly by police brutality. I also want to take quick second to emphasize the lighting in the hallway worked brilliantly. While not a sickly green, those overhead lights contrasted the police officers with the warm tones inside the apartment and this amazing ring of darkness under each officer’s eyes introduces them as Bad Guys. It’s a subtle effect but done well enough to impress the hell out of me.

They don’t look like they are there to help… (THE KILLING OF KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN)

I’m overflowing with words because this movie wrings you dry with every passing second. I would constantly check the time to see how long it had been. I didn’t once think they could make this siege last an entire hour and fifteen minutes. As it unfolded I was proven gleefully wrong and the drama of the film sunk in over time. By the feverish climax I truly just wanted the moment to be over because it hurt too much to watch. There is no denouement, no final chapter. There is no justice, only that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach knowing that you have just witnessed something that has gone wrong.

The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain delivers on that purgation of feeling to a degree even Sophocles would be proud of. My world felt challenged and instead of asking “What if…” I walked away from this film realizing: there are some serious structural problems within the police force that led to the death of an innocent black military veteran. It was a profound way to feel at ten in the morning (when I watched the film) but here I am. I beg people to go watch this movie and instead of saying “I would’ve…” look at how the system in place works here. This movie hit its target as far as I’m concerned, and left me sobbing by it’s tragic conclusion.