With the title “1992” and an image of Watts' own Tyrese Gibson on the poster, one would be safe to assume that the 1992 Los Angeles uprising that erupted in the wake of the Rodney King verdict would be central to this B-movie thriller by Ariel Vromen. Instead, the riots feel incidental to the story.

Indeed the film is set on April 29, 1992, a date immortalized in infamy (and in song, by the SoCal band Sublime), but the protests that grew into riots that are now considered an uprising are merely background action for a heist movie that pits a crew of professional thieves against a former gang member. Any insights about the events of that specific day in L.A. won’t be found in this vault.

Gibson plays Mercer Bey, known as “OG Merc” to his old compatriots in the hood. He’s fresh out of prison, and trying going straight with a factory job manufacturing catalytic converters at Pluton Metals. He’s also attempting to be a strong and steady father to his teen son Antoine (Christopher A’mmanuel).

Scott Eastwood co-stars as Riggin, who’s assembling one last heist (it’s always the last one, isn’t it?). He convinces his younger brother Dennis (Dylan Arnold) and friend Copeland (Clé Bennett) to link up for a daring robbery of the platinum vault at Pluton, and then brings his dad Lowell (Ray Liotta) in on the plan. On the day of the uprising, when “no one’s minding the shop,” they spring into action, taking advantage of the opportunity that the LAPD’s attention will be elsewhere.

A series of unfortunate events and dubious decisions leads the entire ensemble to the factory; a series of rash and violent choices leads to tragedy; father against father, a son for a son. It would be positively Shakespearean if it was in the least bit compelling. The problem is that the premise of the script, by Vromen and Sascha Penn, just feels like a high-concept Frankenstein job, pasting together two ideas (“what if 'Heat' was during the L.A. riots?”) without giving much thought to the deeper themes and ideas at play.

A grizzled Gibson is always a compelling screen presence; the late, great Liotta is appropriately terrifying too. But the rest of the story has muddled motivations and stakes. Liotta’s Lowell is hesitant to do the job but has a bewilderingly rapid change of heart. He brings along a Waingro-style wild card heavy who begins the bloodshed, and things spiral from there, as Mercer and Antoine, who have interrupted the heist, fight for their lives.

It ends up being the better choice for Vromen to swerve away from the uprising in the latter half of the film — what he presents in the first half is cringeworthy: a chintzy and cheesy playacting of the chaos, with any discussion of the issues feeling forced and also extremely retrograde politically. When Antoine expresses frustration that his father has pulled him from the streets, justifiably expressing his rage at the oppression he has witnessed, Mercer scolds his son that rioting is what is expected of them. The perspective feels distressingly old-fashioned in a post-Black Lives Matter America.

But even the look of “1992” feels faded from age and has a shallow focus. Every exterior shot of Los Angeles has a desaturated and yellowed color correction and every shot seems to have a short depth of field. The look of the film at night and in the factory is much more sophisticated, with the specific use of light and dark in the closed facility coming into play. But the geography and some of the coincidences are as baffling as the messaging. The 96 minute runtime feels cyclical and endless.

Despite associating with the 1992 uprising, this film doesn’t want to engage with any of the issues or topics at hand. Vromen and Penn would have been better off writing a straightforward father-son heist flick without trying (and failing) to pull off this high-concept maneuver.

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‘1992’

1.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for violence and pervasive language)

Running time: 1:36

How to watch: In theaters Aug. 30

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