Review: Fox's 'Shots Fired' misses its mark

If you’re going to walk through a cultural minefield, you’d better know where you’re going.

Searching, it seems, for a social-issue prestige answer to ABC's American Crime and FX’s American Crime Story, Fox has lured two of our best filmmakers to television, Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Secret Life of Bees, Love & Basketball) and Reggie Rock Bythewood (Get on the Bus). Girded with Fox’s support and armed with a cast that includes such big names as Helen Hunt and Richard Dreyfuss, the couple is tackling one of the great flashpoints of our racial divide: police shootings of teenagers.

Along they way, they're giving us a few interesting characters (especially women) and some sharp takes on how race affects our perception of — and access to — justice. But somehow, where they’ve ultimately landed in Shots Fired (Wednesday, 8 ET/PT, ** ½ out of four) is in the middle of a standard issue, multi-part TV mystery — a 10-episode series driven by yet another wide-ranging criminal conspiracy, this one embracing corrupt politicians, venal businessmen and evil cops. It’s as if 24 suddenly grew a social conscience.

If that's the story they want to tell, that's their prerogative. But even if this one were told more sensibly and efficiently, you’d still most likely be left with a split audience. Those who come to Shots Fired because they’re interested in the social issues being explored will probably be put off by the mystery that distracts from them. And those who come for the mystery will probably be put off by the old-hat nature of too many of its tricks.

The inciting event here is the role-reversal shooting of a white teenager in a small North Carolina town by the city’s lone black cop (Tristan "Mack" Wilds). With the seeming support of the governor (Helen Hunt), the Justice Department sends in an ambitious special prosecutor, Preston Terry (Stephan James), and a smart but troubled investigator, Ashe Akino (Sanaa Lathan, who may be reason enough to keep watching, despite Shots' flaws).

When they're not juggling personal problems and sexual adventures, Terry and Akino work on a case that's more complicated than it looks, and that may be linked to the uninvestigated murder of a black teenager. The deeper they go, the more involved they become with the town's residents, including a cop who may not want the case solved (Stephen Moyer), a preacher who seizes her own chance for advancement (Aisha Hinds) and a businessman (Dreyfuss) with his own agenda.

There are some powerful moments, particularly in the way the show captures the suffering of the two grieving mothers (DeWanda Wise and Jill Hennessy),  and the anger and fear of a community that feels set upon from all sides. But those moments are diminished by the mechanics of the plot, and by a few too many performances that seem to have wandered over from In the Heat of the Night. In the end, you can't help feeling that what you're really watching is a good, small movie idea that got buried under the avalanche of a major TV project.

Which is a very good way to get lost.