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American Son

American Son

Drama · TV Movie · 2019

Time passes and tension mounts in a Florida police station as an estranged interracial couple awaits news of their missing teenage son.

Movie details

American Son

“There's been an incident.”

2019 Drama · TV Movie 1h 30m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

5.9 / 10

7.9K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

48 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

34 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

6.0 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

Time passes and tension mounts in a Florida police station as an estranged interracial couple awaits news of their missing teenage son.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over American Son?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Where it lives

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Kenny Leon

Written by

Christopher Demos-Brown

Kerry Washington

Kerry Washington

Kendra Ellis-Connor

Steven Pasquale

Steven Pasquale

Scott Connor

Jeremy Jordan

Jeremy Jordan

Officer Paul Larkin

Eugene Lee

Eugene Lee

Lt. John Stokes

Court is in session

Put American Son on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Sentimental Softie

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Adrenaline Seeker

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.