Based off of the Broadway play of the same name, the film follows Kendra (Kerry Washington) and her estranged husband Scott (Steven Pasquale) as they reunite at a police station while they search for their missing son. While they wait for answers, tensions rise as they rehash issues from their marriage and race.
American Son came to Broadway in 2018 before being adapted into a Netflix film. Kerry Washington and Steven Pasquale reprise their roles for the film as do Jeremy Jordan and Eugene Lee.
I never got to see this while it was on Broadway so I have nothing to compare it to. In terms of the film itself, the source material doesn’t work in this particular medium. There seemed to be little to no changes made when adapting it from a play into a film. This hinders it in this case as the action is stuck in one place for the whole film.
The action taking place in one area works for theatre, but in film, there has to be a way to keep the audience engaged. There are opportunities for close ups we don’t get when watching something live, different camera angles, a variety of techniques to emphasize the mood of the circumstances and none of that was used.
It’s tricky, because filmed stage productions work and this might have benefited from that instead of taking the stage script as is and calling it the film adaptation.
Again, I never saw the Broadway production so this could just be a script issue overall. It’s a shame because I was looking forward to watching it.
American Son is a play. There have been successful plays turned into films. In order for a play to become a film, things need to change.
Broadway plays as a whole need to become more accessible for the masses. I think this is a step in the right direction in making that happen, but this is also not the way to do it.
Sorry, went off on a tangent there, but I’m so frustrated by this. Kerry Washington is great and has the best performance of anyone in the cast.
American Son is streaming on Netflix.
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