Best movie of this year hands down!

A lot of fun.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Ask yourself a question, what if a loved one was brutally killed, but you were the only one who cared about getting justice for the victim? That was the reality in the small town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania in 2008, when a migrant worker was killed in a hate crime. Shenandoah is one of those small towns, where everyone knows everyone else, most people even work in the same place, but recently, things had been changing. Migrate workers had been brought in to keep the failing factories open, and the citizens of the flailing town were losing their jobs. One night some drunk teenagers were joking around, but to a recent arrival to this country, who didn't speak the language or know the culture, it looked like something else. As he confronted the teens, they proceeded to assault him, shouting racial slurs in one of the worst assaults the town had ever seen, and when the dust had settled, the worker was dead. After a brief investigation, the police linked the crime to several football players and charged them with minor crimes, but the town wasn't outraged, in fact, as this documentary explores, most of the townspeople actually approve of what the police did! This documentary is utterly shocking, taking us through the crime and investigation, while giving us a look at both sides from the towns reaction to the man's fiancée and the very few outsiders who actually faced threats and harassment, simply for asking that justice be served. Does this kind of thing really still happen in the United States? According to this documentary, the small town racist, gang, mentality is still alive and well, and it's closer than you think. Fighting it isn't as simple as going online and telling people about it either. The documentary was truly shocking, not just because of the ages of the boys involved, but for the sheer fact that these people thought they were justified in what they had done, and by how the react to anyone who tries to tell them differently.

The film opens up to the sound of fire engines and the squeals of children that evokes a kind of ominous feeling that foretells the direction of the film. We witness a parade of people celebrating the coming holiday season in this very small and outdated coal mining town in west Pennsylvania. This documentary is surprisingly filmed in 2012 even though one gets the feeling of being transported back to 1995. This community of people comes from a long line of very proud Polish and Irish immigrants. The hypocrisy of the film is that they are very opposed to the current movement of Hispanic immigrants into their small town, Shenandoah. Their racial views come into the spot light when the film centers in on an incident that had happened in the town. The director depicts the crime scene like a horror film leaving you on suspense. The dark images of the murder scene where a group of boys from the local football team beat a man of Mexican descent to death send chills through the audience. The viewer gets an inside look to the thoughts of one of the convicted murderers, Brian Scully who speaks as a naïve young boy. Throughout the movie you are conflicted with your feelings toward him as he seems to be a product of his environment held under pressure during the moments of the crime. Though he feels remorse for his actions, one is still unsure of how much he has learned. The film proceeds to show how this crime has affected the convicted, the families involved, and the town as a whole. The audience learns of the family of Luis Ramirez and the obstacles they have dealt with while living in America. The films juxtaposes Mr. Ramirez's home town in Mexico to Shenandoah to show the audience how similar the two towns are despite their cultural differences. One of the most compelling parts of the documentary are the scenes from a local protest, where community member's ferociously yell their opposing views on immigration and other racial ethnicities that seem to have "taken over" their town. The constant intolerance from the people of Shenandoah makes the audience understand how racial discrimination is still an issue in the United States. The director seems to have a reason for every style choice and organizational decision involved with the production of the film that makes the experience cohesive and interesting. Overall I feel this film does a great job of creating a compelling and objective view point for the viewer to create their own opinions.

Shenandoah follows the aftermath of a gruesome hate crime that happened on the homonym town. Had this not been a true story, it would sound like a cheap script movie: declining Appalachian town, start high-school football players who provide the only entertainment, bitter people unable to cope with new economic realities, suspicion of outsiders, bigoted locals, corrupt local police...However, this is not fiction, but the grim reality surrounding the murder of a Mexican immigrant. The basic facts are presented on first two minutes. Then, the documentary alternate interviews with the victim's family, one of the accused students, and people in town as they prepare for the trial. This documentary does a good job of trying to look at the crime from different angles without providing validation for the excuses of the perpetrators. Permeating the narratives and the very few on-camera questions is the question of how the ex-ante dehumanization of the victim somehow makes the crime more palatable to the local community. Nonetheless, instead of stating this fact repeatedly, the directors cleverly let the prejudice and the other processes that go on people's mind transpire to the viewer.

A documentary by David Turnley, "Shenandoah" observes as a gang of Pennsylvanian youths, all members of a High School football team, assault and kill Luis Suarez, a Mexican teenager.Issues of race are immediately delved into. Shenandoah is a small town, closely knit, and low wages and hard times have left locals seething with anger. Immigrants, illegal or otherwise, are seen as a threat. More than a threat, immigrants are deemed "not human". "I didn't think of him as a person," one of the killers admits.Turnley then takes us to the football field. Here, young men are indoctrinated, hypermasculinized, dubious notions of manhood, power, aggression, gender, sexuality, race and nationhood instilled. To be a "man", one must win, one must dominate, one must crush. Crush what? Anything deemed feminine, deemed Other, deemed different, deemed weak. But whilst the mastering of violence as a necessary test of masculinity (and eventually patriotism) once led to young men being shipped abroad to kill the Other – foreigners deemed subhuman and soft – now the Other is in one's own backyard. The killing happens here, on home soil.Studies have shown that young men who are members of certain school sports teams are twice as likely to abuse their dating partners. The term "hyper-masculine identity disorder" is itself increasingly entering gender identity disorder indices. The purported symptoms of this "disorder" are an overly inflated sense of entitlement, a propensity for violent outbursts (physical, sexual or verbal), homophobia, bigotry, the belief that all things "feminine" are inferior, emotional detachedness, feelings of inadequacy, a disregard for others, hyper-nationalism, obsessions with physical strength and a propensity toward risky behaviour and/or extreme competitiveness.It's thus fitting that one of the film's subplots contrasts the testosterone of the football field with the more placid arenas of school theatre halls. Here, one of the killers sings, hops, skips and acts on stage. Before the murder, he'd probably have been mocked for indulging in such a hobby.As the perpetrators were local football stars, Luis Suarez's murder – more a symbolic gang rape – was quickly covered up by local police officers. They deliberately botched the investigation, but activists and several upstanding townsfolk ensured that the crime wasn't suppressed. Climaxing powerfully with Bruce Springsteen's "Lift Me Up", "Shenandoah" ends with some semblance of justice, and the hope that further progress will one day be made.8/10 – See the haunting documentary, "Murder on a Sunday Morning".