'Fruitvale Station' takes the measure of a tragic shooting

THE NOTORIOUS MURDER at the end of the astoundingly well-judged "Fruitvale Station" lurks behind a dreamy mirage of social progress.

It's New Year's Eve 2008, a Bay Area Rapid Transit train carries a happy Oakland-bound cargo of blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians and combinations in between. The mood is warm, buzzed, congenial - everyone makes room, everyone seems prepared to give up his seat to someone more tired, or older, or pregnant.

For a moment, on this train and in this place, the purported Obama era dream of a post-racial America seems possible - what a smart, smooth sequence this is.

Then there's a scuffle. Nothing major, but it's trouble, and when trouble arrives, the post-racial bubble pops rather quickly.

Transit cops pull suspects from the train, all black, irrespective of their involvement in the scrum. They're pushed against a wall, forced to sit, to shut up. Maximum force meets minor resistance. Within a minute, one of the detainees, Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan, terrific) will be on his face, unarmed and defenseless, and a transit cop will shoot him in the back.

"Fruitvale Station" isn't about right and wrong, guilt and innocence. There's no question about what happened, thanks to cellphone footage - the cop (who says he thought Grant was reaching for his Taser) was tried and convicted and jailed.

The movie, an eerily assured debut by Oakland native and USC grad Ryan Coogler, is instead a small memorial to the man who died - a memorial that, in movie terms, brings the man briefly, completely and movingly back to life, so as to properly measure the tragedy and the injustice.

So we see Grant with all of his flaws. Though framed as the last day in Grant's life, the film weaves in flashbacks to the young man's stint in prison, shows the hair-trigger temper that's made Grant's life an up-and-down struggle.

As the movie begins, it's been on an upswing: He's striving to be a provider, has embraced the responsibilities of fatherhood, perhaps learned from the example of his devoted, patient mother (Octavia Spencer). His extended family, gathered that day for a cozy dinner, is large and loving, and Oscar watches the sun go down on a full and happy New Year's Eve.

Did Grant really renounce dope dealing on his last day? Probably not. Coogler is reaching here for an image that describes Oscar's hopeful trajectory.

Otherwise, the director's instincts seem unerring. Coogler has a great eye for telling observation, poetic details - Oscar at a service station, looking at a pit bull limping along the sidewalk, an encounter that becomes a shrewd parable about assumptions and perception, and brilliantly conveys the movie in miniature.

When was the last time a director turned something so fraught and polemical into something so disarming, moving and personal? When was the last time I saw a first feature this good?

Nothing comes to mind.