Who can forget the night that Los Angeles erupted into violence and looting, the date was April 29th when the verdict of not guilty rang out over the airwaves. A jury acquitted four officers of the Los Angeles Police Department charged with using excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King. This led to six days of unrest that will forever be etched in the minds of the people who witnessed it in real-time.
Ariel Vromen’s (who acts as Director, Screenwriter, and Producer) new film is a heist film that takes place during the first night of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The film follows a recently paroled Mercer (Tyrese Gibson) as he tries to restore his life and relationship with his son Antoine Bay (Christopher A’mmanuel). Across town, another father and son Lowell and Riggin Bigby (Ray Liotta and Scott Eastwood) put their strained relationship to the test as they plot a dangerous heist to steal catalytic converters that contain valuable platinum, from the factory where Mercer works. As tensions rise in Los Angeles and chaos erupts, both families reach their boiling points when they collide in this tense crime-thriller.
Heist movies usually incorporate hurdles for said heisters, be it the weather as an obstacle (Hard Rain), or even herds of the undead as in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, there hasn’t been one (in recent memory) that uses actual events as a backdrop for a film. 1992 does just that, but sparsely and not heavy-handedly, this is more of a film about relationships and how one event can change those drastically.
Vromen introduces the audience to the players and their relationships with each other early on, there’s an interesting dynamic between the families and how they react to the events unfolding on this day. Mercer (Gibson) early on shows he cares about his son’s future and doesn’t want him to follow in his footsteps. Then we have Lowell (Liotta) who seems caring of his two sons Riggin (Eastwood) and Dennis (Dylan Arnold), but deep down will put their lives at risk for a big score.
The film eventually puts that dynamic on the back burner and focuses on the heist side of things, which is a shame because it has large dramatic legs and differs itself from other films of this genre. 1992 feels like a paint-by-numbers thriller/heist film, sometimes even very forced, but it’s still entertaining. Ray Liotta is magical and menacing throughout, with Scott Eastwood hitting high dramatic marks also. The main issue with the film is it didn’t exude enough tension or chaos on the screen, it never suspends reality enough to make it feel more than just a film.
That all being said 1992 even with its flaws has enough entertainment and interesting performances to make it worth checking out. Go in to check out the performances from Ray Liotta, Tyrese Gibson and Scott Eastwood, don’t go in looking for much commentary on the riots.
1992 opens in theatres on August 30, 2024
