John Boyega and Michael K. Williams in ‘892’: Film Review | Sundance 2022

The systems that failed Brian Easley, a Marine veteran who was shot by police after threatening to bomb a Wells Fargo in an Atlanta suburb in 2017, are almost too numerous to count. After serving in the Iraq War, Easley returned to the United States with little support and few options. A litany of health issues, including PTSD, left him unable to sustain full-time work. Right before his death, he was living in a $25-a-day-motel room and wading through a bureaucratic nightmare with the Department of Veterans Affairs, which hadn’t deposited his most recent disability check.

892 is a sensitive dramatization of how the 33-year-old father had run out of options when he walked into the bank that July morning. Based on the article “They Didn’t Have to Kill Him,” by Aaron Gell, Abi Damaris Corbin’s debut feature is less a biopic than a chilling and heartbreaking portrait of a man teetering on the brink of despair. Corbin, who penned the screenplay with Young Vic artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah, focuses on reconstructing the moments that led up to the vet’s fateful decision.

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The emotional and gripping tale wouldn’t hit as hard, however, without John Boyega’s stellar performance as Easley. It’s the actor’s ability to reflect, with poise and command, the competing, often incongruent layers of a man most of us will never know that makes this absorbing drama.

The night before Brian (Boyega) decides to rob a bank, he makes his usual call to his daughter, Kiah (London Covington). As he walks along the highway toward his motel room, he guesses what name she will give the dog he promises to buy her. After the humorous game — he offers Gollum as an option — Kiah asks her father what time he’s coming to pick her up the next day for their scheduled hangout. Before he can properly apologize for breaking his word, he runs out of credit on his flip phone. 892’s opening moments efficiently establish Brian’s conditions — the lack of stable housing, the intermittent communication with his daughter and the weight of promises he can’t keep — and prime viewers for his startling decision.

Brian looks calm as he walks into the Wells Fargo branch the next morning, donning a light gray sweater and weathered blue jeans. With his backpack casually slung over his shoulder and his glasses perched lightly on his nose, he approaches one of the tellers, Rosa Diaz (Selenis Leyva), and asks to withdraw $25. She makes frivolous conversation while cheerily accessing his account info. The situation takes a sinister turn when Brian, beginning to sweat, slips her a note that reads, “I have a bomb.” He then asks the petrified teller, who makes subtle eye contact with her branch manager, Estel Valerie (Nicole Beharie), to call 911.

892 isn’t the usual hostage crisis thriller, despite DP Doug Emmett’s moody visual language. Brian instructs Rosa and Estel to escort the other tellers and remaining customers out of the bank, assuring them that he doesn’t mean any harm. He also maintains an astonishing and almost unnerving politeness throughout the ordeal, peppering his language with pleases and sorrys. He’s not driven by greed or fueled by rage; he just wants someone to listen to him so the Department of Veterans Affairs can wire him his check. The amount he demands — $892 — makes the entire situation more devastating.

As the narrative unfolds and tension builds, it becomes clear that Brian wants people to pay attention to his case, to care about him. He asks Rosa and Estel to call the police, the local news stations and the fire department. Everyone arrives, including hostage negotiator Eli Bernard (the late Michael K. Williams), who establishes a rapport with Brian based on their shared history as Marines. He’s committed to making sure Brian survives this situation.

Strong performances carry 892, which has a relatively straightforward plot. Boyega plays Brian with a sensitivity that heightens the emotional stakes of the film. Brian, who grew up painfully shy before joining the army, was diagnosed with PTSD and suffered from schizophrenia and paranoia. The actor captures the abruptness with which the man’s moods could change, how certain words and sounds triggered him, subsuming the reserved and overly apologetic parts of himself. Leyva and Beharie also cinch their roles as terrified yet compassionate employees. The looks of fear they maintain on their faces throughout the film serve as reminders of the situation’s frightening volatility.

The film’s core, however, rests in the dynamic between Brian and Williams’ tempered Eli. Through harried phone conversations, the two conduct a kind of dance, with Eli, empathetic and firm, trying to relate to Brian through their shared background as former Marines. In one of his final performances, Williams, in restrained form, expands and enriches a rather thinly sketched role.

Most of 892 takes place within the sparsely decorated suburban bank, but Corbin also includes scenes from just outside the building and timeline jumps to contextualize Brian’s decision. His moments in the VA’s office — waiting patiently only to be ignored, handcuffed by the police for losing his temper — are particularly brutal reminders that the vet exhausted his other means. Just beyond the bank’s glass double doors is an army of police officers (SWAT team, FBI, snipers) and reporters swarming the perimeter.

Original reports of Brian’s story covered his death as another instance of police brutality. There had been mounting evidence of that county police department’s troubling history with racism. No one, not even the bank tellers, saw him as a serious threat, and there was a sense that the situation could have been handled.

But someone — there was little consensus as to who — authorized a sniper to shoot, and a bullet pierced through the glass and into Brian’s skull. Corbin’s film doesn’t focus much on the police mismanagement part of the story, which feels like a missed opportunity to sharpen our understanding of the degree to which the state failed Brian. Still the narrative as it stands is certainly worth watching. Not only does it offer a damning lesson about how the United States abandons its veterans, but it tries, with honesty and feeling, to honor a man who just wanted to survive.