Anthony Ramos, left, and John David Washington in Monsters and Men (TIFF)

This provocative drama looks at tensions between New York City law enforcement and young men of color from the ground level. From the very first frame, the filmmakers take a human-scale approach as an African American man, Dennis Williams (John David Washington), is driving through Bedford-Stuyvesant with Al Green playing on his car radio. He seems fun-loving and with nothing to hide. Then he gets pulled over, and despite flashing his badge that identifies himself as a police officer, he’s treated dismissively.

Following this prologue, we meet Manny (Anthony Ramos) who lives in the same neighborhood and is looking for any kind of job to support his wife and growing family. A man with roots in the community, he gives pocket money to the kids who need it and exchanges pleasantries with Darius (Christopher Jordan Wallace), who hangs out by the corner bodega and seemingly knows everything about everybody. We also get the feeling there are murkier aspects to Manny’s life: when applying for a security desk position, he pauses at the question of whether he has ever been convicted of a felony.

One night, Manny happens upon an altercation between police and Darius. He whips out his smartphone and starts recording what is taking place right when one of the officers shoots Darius in front of him. Manny faces the moral dilemma of whether to post the footage online, which could help bring this officer to justice, but at the same time, it might lead to police harassment and unwanted attention paid to his past. As it is, the officers involved in the incident approach him in front of his wife in daylight and suggest he keep quiet.

Writer/director Reinaldo Marcus Green smartly refrains from revealing the actual video of the police shooting. It is that resulting subjectivity that fuels much of the tension, as Officer Williams has a very different reaction from Manny of the shooting. He’s pressured by a friend to report similar incidents of excessive force by the cop who shot Darius, but Williams argues that cops must make split-second decisions at any given moment and no one who hasn’t put on a badge has any right to judge someone who has.

But as we know from the very first scene, Williams has his own issues with how certain officers police take part in racial profiling and similar tactics. He knows there are systemic problems, but making waves now could cost him down the line. Up for a promotion, he enjoys many aspects of his job and is good at it. At one point, his unit of four cops engages with local youth in a friendly game of pick-up basketball, an example of day-to-day relations between police and their communities as they should be.

As gripping and thought provoking as both of these story lines are, the most engaging one pertains to Zyric (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), an African American teenager and top baseball prospect who is unsettled by the Darius shooting. On the one hand, his athletic abilities offer a chance to help his family, but on the other, he knows the racist approaches of the local police all too well: coming home one night, he’s forced to undergo a stop-and-frisk. Zyric gets involved with other local youths engaging in activism in Darius’s name, and their next major protest coincides with the same weekend in which he is to showcase his abilities for professional scouts.

What makes his segment the most affecting is that it doubles as a coming-of-age story. While Manny and Ofc. Williams are already grown men with families, Zyric is starting to see the world through more adult eyes for the first time, having previously lived a sheltered life thanks to athletics. Yet he, just like the other two protagonists, still stands to lose considerably by standing up, which is something Green never lets us forget. For Manny and Ofc. Williams, the scenes that exude the most warmth and humanity occur when they are with loved ones, especially their children, while for Zyric, we see how his prospective athletic career gives his working-class father so much pride.

The acting among the three leads is strong, while from a writing standpoint, Green subverts the stereotype of young black and brown males as threatening by depicting them each as caring figures. If any aspect of the screenplay falters slightly, it is that the characters’ paths rarely cross despite shared connections, as Green opts to mostly keep them all apart. But perhaps this is by design, with the aim of realizing a complex portrait of an unjust world and the ordinary people reacting to it, rather than a drama about achieving justice.

Ultimately, some viewers may find Monsters and Men to be less than dramatically satisfying, but that makes sense; it deals with an issue that is still unresolved in real life.