“They Didn’t Have to Kill Him.” That’s the name of Aaron Gell’s 2018 article on which Abi Damaris Corbin’s debut feature film 892 is based. The hauntingly dark film centers on the real-life story of Lance Corporal Brian Brown Easley, who on a July day in 2017 walked into a Wells Fargo bank based in the suburbs of Atlanta and held it up, taking several hostages. In a stunning performance actor John Boyega, steps into the shoes of the desperate former Marine who, having exhausted all of his resources, made a desperate choice to get the money owed to him.
The nightmarish red-tape that runs through the Department of Veterans Affairs is well known. Still, in focusing on Brian, Corbin puts a face to just one of numerous veterans who served this country and are now left to flounder with food and home insecurity, as well as mental illnesses. It is a situation continually brought to the forefront of society that has never been truly addressed.
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