BSO Movie Review: The Powerful Story of Brian Banks Whose Career Was Destroyed By A False Rape Accusation

11 years of his life. 11 long years that he’ll never get back. Brian Banks’ story is one that needs to be shared. The film’s tag line, “Falsely accused. Wrongfully convicted. Never defeated.” speaks volumes. We had the chance to attend the film’s premiere last night in The Bronx, New York, as Brian Banks surprised the audience and spoke to the youngsters who had just watched his film.

It seems that we’re all suffering from PTSD — considering all that’s happening in our country, as we see so many injustices going on. As the character Justin Brooks portrayed by actor Greg Kinnear said, “The system is flawed.” In the film, we see how the evidence was obtained by Banks as he tricked the alleged victim and got her to admit to lying about being assaulted. However, it was inadmissible because you can’t record someone in the state of California without their knowledge. At this moment, many kids in the audience went off and started yelling, “Are you serious?!” That alone demonstrates that these kids are aware of how ridiculous that sounds.

Going into the film, I was wondering how exactly they were going to portray this and were they going to be transparent about his story. Banks was heavily involved (as he obviously should be). One youngster asked him if his incident in jail was real and did he truly see another inmate getting stabbed. Banks response was, “Yes, jail is bad. Don’t go. Everything in life is a choice so think about your actions because everything has consequences.”

He took us to church.

As an audience member who had just watched When They See Us, I was constantly reminded of the exonerated 5 while watching Banks fight to prove his innocence. It’s enough to make you go mad and then, to see the real life Banks come out and talk about his experience — you just sit back and listen because you want to absorb all his knowledge.

He took an array of questions from how does he deal with his anger to how the justice system failed him and he kept going back to one answer – choice.

We had the chance to speak to Banks and asked him if it gets hard to speak about his experience, being that now he’s a motivational speaker and still works on the California Innocence Project.