Awesome Movie

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A very strange documentary on how racism turned clubs into gangs, youths into warriors and a relatively small stretch of land into a war zone during the past 40 years. This film looks into the history of Los Angeles, how black youths were shunned by the government, harassed by the police and basically pushed to the brink of rioting, as in Watts and Detroit in the 60s. Then in the 90s when rioting hit Los Angeles again, clubs for youths of the 70s had turned into gangs, formed around the two biggest gangs of them all: bloods and crips, who have so far been the reason for the deaths of more than 15000 people. Highly recommendable, this film lets out the anger, despair, peer pressures, negative and positive thinking surrounding the entire nature of gangs forming. This is a very important, well-written and thoroughly researched and interviewed film.

Here is what I got out of the film: cops kept the residents of this area bottled up because the surrounding neighborhoods feared what would happen if poor black people began to spread out. In doing this the cops proved to be arrogant, unfeeling and cruel. Eventually, the people in this ghetto formed gangs. At first the idea was safety and self-defense. But somehow this evolved into rival gangs fighting and killing each other. The irony is that the residents of the ghetto became exactly what they feared and despised: an organized force that kept people behind geographical barriers, held power through fear and intimidation and was respected because the members were devoid of compassion and feeling. The gangs used the cops as role models. While it is alleged in this film that cops beat up people simply because they were black, the black gangsters beat up people because of the color of the bandanna in their pocket. Whats the solution? Who says there is a solution?A riot is shown as a major turning point. All it showed me was that pushing people too far makes them do crazy things. In one scene we see rioters destroying a car. Later they pass a car turned upside-down. So whose cars were they? Some white slum landlord who fled on foot? I doubt it. I think some hapless resident of this neighborhood woke up the next day to find he didn't have a car anymore. And all so rioters could break something. What can you say about people who loot and burn down their own neighborhood? Wouldn't YOU want to contain them? Whats the answer? To me the moral was "get out of the area and don't come back", not "Join a gang and fight".This film was difficult for me to watch because of the overuse of visual effects. Motion sequences were sped up or run backwards and forwards. Stills used "camera shake" or unnecessary zooms. And everywhere was the "old film" effect where phony edge flare, scratches, jumpy picture and even the effect of the film jamming in the projector and catching fire. This stuff is OK if used very sparingly. When applied to every sequence, it get really tedious. And less hip-hop scratch on the soundtrack would have helped.Since I have never lived in this neighborhood, I can only guess how non-gang members feel. But somehow I think that a lot of folks who live in the neighborhood shown in the film wish the gang guys would just go away. To me, this film shows that the gangs hurt their own friends and neighbors a lot more than they help.

The movie was presented in order to "educate" the public on the 40 year gang epidemic amongst the black youths of our Los Angeles society. It was, in short, a failure. The inability to show the true cause of gangs (i.e. the gangsters themselves) was flabbergasting. Yes, they were able to eloquently throw around the term "disenfranchised," yet had no clue as to why these characters chose the streets. It boils down to this: Money, power, and (perceived) respect. Nothing more. Racism did not start this problem. Slavery did not start this problem. Their absentee father did not start this problem. There is an easy, high school-level word that can describe gangs perfectly. That word is opportunism. They brought this movie forward to an extremely gullible and impressionable public who believes whatever they see on TV and they failed to show these black gangsters for what they truly are: professional victims. "Nothing is my fault." No accountability. "It's the white man's fault, it's the Cub Scouts' fault, it's the policeman's fault." The "I did not create this, it was created for me" idea is tired and hackneyed. Black people are disproportionately represented in prison? 28%? Perhaps if they decided to stop committing crime in this state, the numbers might even out. Why can't we have a documentary that simply reports the facts, with no agenda? Why must we perpetuate this myth that the black man can do no wrong? That, somehow, it's someone else's fault? I watched this movie in order to gain a deeper perspective when it comes to the gang culture. Instead I just found myself wading in the deeper-than-usual B.S. Congratulations and thanks a bunch. My opinion of (and my hope for) the blacks youths of L.A. has officially faltered.

What's up with those Crips and Bloods? Can't they, like, just get along and, like, not kill each other? Why do they do that? Well, because they're the product of decades of segregation and isolation into under-developed, falling-apart communities that are treated as virtual No Man Lands within the very city of LA. How did this happen? Well, it some of it can be traced back all the way to World War I.....Stacy Peralta's "Crips and Bloods: Made in America" starts out with some pretty stunning information. More people have died in gang battles between the blue and the red than in some third world events we in the first world label "genocide." Many of the citizens of the areas the Crips and Bloods inhabit have lived their entire lives without seeing the Pacific Ocean due to the invisible barriers that separate them from the world. These factoids are inserted in many compelling ways in a documentary that tries, with variable success, to really present the core of the issues of these gangs running around in South Central.The idea is good, the execution is a little off. Despite the title of the movie, the genesis of the actual gangs is passed by in a quick and uninformative way while more focus is put onto the history of the area itself and its relations to civil rights. That's not too big of a deal, but over-stylized digital effects and a constantly moving camera attempt to make what is a real social issue into something more resembling a hip-hop or skater video. I think the attempt was largely to put more animation into what is otherwise a lot of still photography and talking heads, but sometimes it can get distracting and a lot of the meat of the documentary has to compete with this weird tendency in the editing to intercut with sped-up montages. The more effective parts are the parts where you can hear the director interviewing. I think the best scene is when Peralta asks, "Well, what about morality?" and his interviewee basically says, "We have to put morals behind us just to survive." It's easy from an outside perspective to believe that the gang problem is an issue of a community of people being irresponsible and stupid, but it's harder to understand how the problem was developed from decades of negligence.I think, for all the flash, that this movie has some good ideas and decent journalism, but needed a bit more research and a better plan of execution. Ultimately, it's a very glossy rough draft of a video essay, and some more information is needed. At least it has an optimistic conclusion with an idea of how things could be turned around, which is something most social documentaries evade and need more of.--PolarisDiB