‘We Grown Now’ review: A lovely but haunting Chicago snapshot of two boys’ lives

The closing credits for Minhal Baig’s lovely and lyrical yet haunting and heartbreaking “We Grown Now” include Annette Freeman as a consultant. That name might ring a bell for Chicagoans of a certain age. In October 1992, 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was walking to school with his mother in the Cabrini-Green Homes when he was shot and killed by a gang member who was trying to take out rival members. The tragedy shook Chicago and drew nationwide attention, e.g., a Time magazine story headlined, “A Brief Life in the Killing Zone.”

Dantrell Davis’ mother is Annette Freeman.

“We Grown Now” is set in and around Cabrini-Green in the fall of 1992. (Filming took place over the course of one month in Chicago, and in the interest of full disclosure: My sister Laura was the property master on the film.) While the film does not center on Dantrell’s murder, we see how it impacts the lives of the fictional but wholly authentic residents of the projects, including 10-year-old best friends Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez).

We follow Malik and Eric as they drag old mattresses down stairwells (the elevators are forever broken) and into the open, so they can play a game which involves simply running as fast as you can and soaring as high as you can, with those mattresses as your cushion. Malik lives with his mother Dolores (Jurnee Smollett), his younger sister Diana (Madisyn Barnes) and his grandmother Anita (S. Epatha Merkerson) in the apartment his grandparents moved to years ago, after fleeing racial intolerance in Tupelo, Mississippi, while Eric is next door in an apartment with his widowed father Jason (Lil Rel Howery) and his older sister Amber (Avery Holliday).

The interior, at-home scenes are filled with warmth and low-key realness, as when Jason counts out the cash to pay for rent and utilities and has Eric try to do the math in his head to ascertain the total monthly tab, or when Malik huddles close to his mom, who huddles close to HER mother. Their respective homes are cozy and warm and tidy, but we’re always aware of the world outside. It’s never truly quiet at Cabrini-Green.

We know life is far from idyllic for Malik and Eric and their families, but harsh realities come crashing down after the shooting death of Dantrell. All Cabrini-Green residents, including the children, are made to carry ID cards at all times just to enter their complex. In a stunning and shattering sequence, police swarm the projects in the deep of night, tearing up homes in search of drugs and weapons. Dolores pleads with officers to stop, but they literally push her aside more than once as they ransack the place. There’s no explanation, no apology, no regard for the women and children who call this apartment home.

Malik and Eric find the restrictions to be more annoying than alarming. They skip school and embark on a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” adventure that includes a visit to the Art Institute, where they marvel at Gustave Caillebotte’s “Paris Street; Rainy Day” and Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” and are particularly taken with Walter Ellison’s 1935 painting “Train Station,” which depicts vacationing Caucasian passengers boarding a train for vacations in the South and Blacks heading to Northern cities such as Chicago to seek jobs. Only when Malik and Eric return home do they realize how much they’ve upset their parents.

It’s unclear if Malik and Eric are in denial about the threat of violence that permeates their world, or if they’re too young to truly grasp it. Probably a little of both. When Dolores is offered a better job opportunity in Peoria, there’s really no choice; they’re moving. The ripple effect of life in Cabrini-Green means two friends who might otherwise have grown up together will quite likely never see each other again.

Director/writer/co-producer Baig (a Chicago native) and the production design team do a remarkable job of capturing the essence of the time and place, with cinematographer Pat Scola bathing the interior scenes in warm palettes that contrast with the stark exteriors. Music by Jay Wadley enhances the coming-of-age aspects of the story; there are times when Malik and Eric and their schoolmates are running and jumping in the playground, or reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in class, when “We Grown Now” seems like a picturesque slice of Americana — until the realities of life in Cabrini-Green come crashing down, and the night is filled with the sounds of sirens and the twirling blue-and-red reflections from the light bars of police squads.

With Smollett, Howery and Merkerson infusing life and depth into the adult characters and the young actors Blake Cameron James and Gian Knight Ramirez turning in natural and affecting work, “We Grown Now” will resonate with you for a very long time.