Mental Airstrikes: Film Analysis

Mental Airstrikes
A popular image of a boy in an ambulance has been circulated for the past couple days. Angus McDowall from “The Huffington Post” described the five year old’s face as “an expression of incomprehension on his dust- and blood-caked face”. The boy’s name is Omran Daqneesh, Omran is a syrian boy, and like much of the Syrian population. Caught in civil war. Omran’s older brother Ali Daqneesh was wounded in last Wednesday’s airstrike, pulled from rubble and rushed in an ambulance, Ali died due to internal bleeding and organ damage. After this sad and compelling story was put out into mainstream media, the voices of the public began re-emphasizing the five year civil war in Syria. Warplanes from both Syrian and Russian forces
Morris is a 13 year old african american who aspires to become a rapper, his dad Curtis is a widowed father and coaches professional soccer. The film emphasizes the road of boyhood to adulthood with his dad being a guide through all the mess. Morris is advised by his German tutor to attend a youth center activity to make friends, at the youth center he encounters racism, mostly since the Germans consider themselves free from ancestral bigotry so racial comments don’t appear as taboo. He encounters many stereotypical assumptions, like being a drug dealer or being a good basketball player. At the youth center he also meets Katrin, a slightly older german girl for which he falls for. Although Katrin has a boyfriend, she genuinely loves Morris and pushes him to the brink. Whether or not she completely embarrases Morris or pushes him in the right direction, it helps Morris discover himself as an individual. The writer of the review A. O. Scott from “The N.Y. Times” praised the actors how they handled the father-son relationship “the love between them is the beat that drives the movie’s flow”, says Scott. I personally choose this article because I had seen the film and I’m really into the Hip Hop/Rap