1992 (2024) review

Dir. Ariel Vromen

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

It’s April 29th, 1992; Los Angeles, California. What begins as an ordinary day in many working class pockets of the city soon turns into a violent, bloody, and fiery hellhole when the news announces the four officers on trial in the brutal beating Rodney King have been acquitted. By an all-white jury no less. The acquittal causes disenfranchised residents all over LA to take to the streets in a furious rage of looting and destruction, the likes of which broadcast across numerous television sets across America.

Originally titled “April 29, 1992,” some executive, producer, or maybe even co-writer/director Ariel Vromen (The Iceman) elected to have the film’s title make a statement by shortening it to 1992. The film involves two dichotomous storylines that converge in the final 40 minutes against the backdrop of the famous South Central riots.

The first involves a heist being planned prior to the jury reaching a verdict. A clearly aged but still fiery Ray Liotta, in what has to be his final film role, plays Lowell, a veteran safecracker tempted by the millions of platinum sitting in a precious metals factory. At first, he thinks the robbery will take a miracle to pull off. Then the uprising happens, and he phones his sons, Riggin (Scott Eastwood) and Dennis (Dylan Arnold), and tells them to get the van ready.

Working at that same factory is Mercer (Tyrese Gibson), an ex-con simply trying to keep his teenage son, Antoine (Christopher Ammanuel), safe, especially on a day like this, when he knows a verdict could come. After he’s sent home from the factory, he desperately wants to head back to the factory with his son, for the two live in the hood; “in the belly of the beast,” he tells a security guard with whom he pleas to allow them use of the building as a safe-haven.

By the time Mercer and Antoine reach the factory, the thieves have botched the job so badly you wonder how they ever manage to successfully rob a pawn shop. One of their men (Clé Bennett) has severed his leg in a forklift accident. Lowell’s sons are beginning to question his intentions. Nevermind the fact that en route to the factory, Lowell looks at the rioters and states that the verdict in the trial “doesn’t give them the right to do that. That’s other people’s property.”

Vromen and co-writer Sascha Penn would’ve been better served to explore these types of hypocrisies in greater detail, especially considering 1992 is essentially a melting pot of what American audiences enjoy: gunfire, a massive heist, tension, and despite some gradual buildup that suggests otherwise, a shootout and a car chase.

Tyrese Gibson is an intriguing actor insofar that even in the junkiest material (Fast X), he can turn in a likable performance. While the script isn’t suited to match his heights achieved in Baby Boy, 1992 has some things in common with a John Singleton movie. It offers pointed racial commentary, such as a scene when Gibson’s Mercer tells Antoine, who is distraught over the verdict, that there’s a reason there are no firetrucks nor ambulances cruising through their neighborhoods looking to help. Like Singleton’s features, it offers well-directed mayhem. Regardless of what the script calls for, Gibson informs those that he only gets better when handed smarter material.

I was also taken by Christopher Ammanuel, a young actor forced to show a great deal of raw emotion, even long before he encounters the robbers. There’s a hostile interaction with police that might feel all-too-real for some, and at the heart of it is the innocent fear of Ammanuel and the quiet, restrained anxiety of Gibson. He turns in a strong performance opposite a veteran presence.

All of this unfolds as Vromen directs 1992 with skill, heavy on sweeping aerial shots that show the sunburnt neighborhoods of Los Angeles hours before many neighborhoods are engulfed by the sounds of alarms and the intensity of raging smoke. It illustrates the right mood for a film that can be accused of doing too much, from racial inequality to moral navigation, but it’s one that at least shows a rare competency for every issue it chooses to profile.

Starring: Tyrese Gibson, Christopher Ammanuel, Ray Liotta, Scott Eastwood, Dylan Arnold, Michael Beasley, Ori Pfeffer, Oleg Taktarov, and Clé Bennett. Directed by: Ariel Vromen.