“Crown Heights”, which is currently available on Amazon Prime, presents a harrowing drama based on one infuriating real-life case of legal injustice. Alternating between one wrongfully incarcerated man and his best friend willing to help him as much as possible for many years, the movie often strikes us hard as calmly depicting their respective struggles, and that is more than enough for its several notable narrative flaws.

At first, the movie depicts how everything suddenly turned upside down for Colin Warner (Lakeith Stanfield) on one day of 1980. At that time, he was an 18-year-old West Indian immigrant lad who had struggled to get a better life in the Crown Heights neighborhood of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, but then he was unexpectedly arrested by two cops just because he happened to be marked as the prime suspect of a recent murder case in his neighborhood. Although he had some criminal record, he was not associated with the victim of the case at all, but the cops and the prosecutor were already ready to get him charged for the case, and that was the beginning of his long and grueling plight.

During the first half of the film, we see how things get worse and worse for Warner despite the sincere efforts from his sympathetic lawyer and his best friend Carl “KC” King (Nnamdi Asomugha), who instantly comes to help Warner once he hears that his best friend is in jail. While the prosecutor only has several questionable witnesses without any concrete evidence against Warner, the man who really killed the victim is subsequently arrested and then put on the trial along with Warner, but the jury eventually conclude that both Warner and this guy are guilty as charged, and the judge presiding over the case decides to punish Warner more even though showing his reservation on the case.

Warner is subsequently sent to a maximum-security prison outside New York City, and he surely struggles a lot as trying to adjust himself to his grim circumstance. Although he does not want to get himself into any kind of trouble, he soon gets punished by not only those guards but also some of his fellow prisoners, and he does not even get paroled 15 years later just because he still insists that he was wrongfully accused.

In the meantime, King keeps trying his best for his friend. He often raises the money for assisting Warner’s appeal to the court, and he also delves more into the details of the case, but he gets frustrated again and again as the system is not particularly willing to help him or Warner. Nevertheless, along with Warner’s devoted girlfriend Antoinette (Natalie Paul), King continues to provide emotional support to Warner even when Warner is at the bottom of his despair and frustration, though his increasing devotion to his best friend consequently causes some strain in his relationship with his wife. She is understandably not so pleased about how her husband often pays more attention to his best friend than their family matters, and that eventually leads to more estrangement between them.

Later in the story, there comes a good chance via a lawyer named William Robedee (Bill Camp), who happens to hire King as his process server. After hearing about Warner’s case from King, Robedee agrees to look into the case, and he and King soon find how sloppy the conviction process on Warner really was. All they will have to do is locating and then persuading several unreliable witnesses who testified at the court at that time, though that turns out to be a bit more difficult than expected.

Slowly but steadily rolling its story and characters to the expected resolution, the screenplay by writer/director Matt Ruskin, which is based on a podcast episode of “This is American Life”, wisely does not overplay many exasperating aspects of Warner’s story. Although the movie feels a bit too dragged during its second half, its earnest but engaging narrative keeps holding our attention, and we come to care more about Warner’s extending plight while also reminded that there are lots of unfortunate people like Warner out there.

Above all, the movie is supported well by the strong performances from its two main cast members. Lakeith Stanfield, who would be a lot more prominent thanks to his scene-stealing supporting turn in TV sitcom series “Atlanta” and the following Oscar nomination via “Judas and the Black Messiah” (2021), did a solid job of embodying his character’s longtime desperation and frustration, and Nnamdi Asomugha, who also participated in the production of the film, is reliable as quietly conveying to us his character’s diligent devotion to Warner’s case.

I must point out that several substantial supporting characters in the story are rather underdeveloped in comparison. At least, Natalie Paul and Bill Camp, who became more recognizable thanks to his Emmy-nominated supporting turn in acclaimed HBO TV miniseries “The Night Of”, bring some life and personality to their respective roles, and Brian Tyler Henry, an ever-dependable actor who was incidentally appeared along with Stanfield in “Atlanta”, leaves a considerable impression on us despite his very brief appearance in the movie.

Although it has been more than 5 years since it was released in 2017, “Crown Heights” is still worthwhile to watch for not only its competent direction and good performances but also its serious social issues which remain quite relevant in the American society even at present. Yes, justice was eventually delivered to Warner, but the system which irreversibly ruined his life is still quite flawed as before, and the movie certainly does not let us forget that at all.